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New Public TV Documentary on Fukushima: Meltdown: Cooling Water Crisis

A shocking new 49-minute documentary from Japan’s public television broadcaster NHK titled “MELTDOWN: Cooling Water Crisis,” reveals new information on how corporate policy undermined efforts to keep the three destroyed Fukushima-Daiichi reactors stable one week after the triple reactor meltdown disaster began. See video here. Hear an interview related to the film here.

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Fukushima Continues to Plague Pacific Ocean Fishery

John LaForge
Spring 2019 Nukewatch Quarterly

The Japanese fishing community and watchdog groups have raised alarms over government plans to dump over one million tons of highly contaminated waste water from the three devastated Fukushima nuclear reactors into the Pacific Ocean.

The London Telegraph reported last October that Japan’s “plan to release the approximately 1.09 million tons of water currently stored in 900 tanks… has triggered a fierce backlash from local residents and environmental organizations, as well as groups in South Korea and Taiwan fearful that radioactivity from the second-worst nuclear disaster in history might wash up on their shores.”

Making matters worse, Greenpeace issued a report last January 22 slamming the dumping plan, reminding readers that Tokyo Electric Power Co. or TEPCO—owners of the destroyed reactors—admitted in 2018 that its water decontamination system had never worked. The Telegraph noted, “[T]he Advanced Liquid Processing System (ALPS) has consistently failed to eliminate a cocktail of other radioactive elements, including iodine, ruthenium, rhodium, antimony, tellurium, cobalt and strontium.” Further, “In late September [2018], Tepco was forced to admit that around 80% of the water stored at the Fukushima site still contains radioactive substances above legal levels…” the Telegraph said.

The South China Morning Post reported, “Despite the much-vaunted ALPS plant… TEPCO has confirmed that levels of strontium-90 are more than 100 times above legally permitted levels in 65,000 tons of water that have already been through the ALPS system.” Some of the “treated” waste water still has strontium-90 concentrations 20,000 times the allowable limit.

Japan’s fishing community was outraged about the dumping threat during a series of public hearings last year that were designed to convince skeptical observers that pouring more radiation in the Pacific is a good idea. The magnitude-9 earthquake, and the tsunami it caused on March 11, 2011, left more than 27,500 people dead or missing in northeast Japan and triggered the largest oceanic radioactive contamination in history.

Fukushima’s contaminated water continues to flow into the Pacific at a rate of around 2 billion Becquerels a day, Japan Times reported on March 29, 2018.

Dumping Radioactive Water Poisons Fish

Since Fukushima’s meltdowns began in 2011, there has been regular news of seafood contamination. As recently as Feb. 2, the Japan Times reported that cesium-137 far above Japan’s legal limit was detected in fish caught off Fukushima. According to the local Fishery Cooperative Association, skate that were caught over 180 feet deep were found with 161 Becquerels-per-kilogram of radioactive cesium-137, exceeding the allowable limit of 100 Bq-per-kg.

Cesium-137 from Fukushima has been found in fish in the US and Canadian waters. The Haida Gwaii Observer in Queen Charlotte, British Columbia reported March 16, 2018 on a study by Simon Fraser University. Author Krysztof Starosta discovered that cesium-137 “levels found in both the salmon and soil samples remained below Canada’s safety guidelines, posing minimal health risk to B.C.’s salmon and human populations.” The use of the word “minimal” by Starosta is not a scientific term of art. “Minimal” means there is some risk, especially considering the cumulative effect of eating contaminated fish over many years.

“You can’t say there is absolutely zero risk because any radiation is assumed to carry at least some small risk,” said Delvan Neville of Oregon State University’s Department of Nuclear Engineering & Radiation Health Physics. The Oregon Statesman Journal reported on Neville’s 2014 study which found that cesium-137 from Fukushima in albacore tuna caught off Oregon’s coast had tripled since the three meltdowns. In 2012, albacore and blue fin tuna caught off the west coast, were also found contaminated.

Until 2018, TEPCO repeatedly claimed, and news reporters often noted, that its “advanced [ALPS] processes had reduced the cancer-causing radioactive contaminants” such as strontium-90, iodine-129 and ruthenium-106 in the water “to non-detectible levels.”

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Fukushima Recovery a Vexing Radiation Colossus

By John LaForge

Over 19 million tons of radioactively contaminated soil have been collected in 1-ton bags and stacked in thousands of places in Japan, since the triple meltdowns of March 2011. Eleven million tons could be incinerated. KYODO photograph.

On its 8th anniversary, a brief rundown of Fukushima’s triple reactor catastrophe and the failed recovery schemes is in order.*

Fukushima caused the worst dump of radioactivity to the Pacific Ocean in history. “This event is unprecedented in its total release of radioactive contamination into the ocean” wrote Ken Buesseler of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution for PBS News Hour in March 2016. Buesseler has been recording Fukushima’s Pacific Ocean contamination since it started 3/11/11. While Fukushima is often called the “2nd worst” radiation accident behind Chernobyl, Buesseler said, “More than 80% of the radioactivity from the damaged reactors ended up in the Pacific — far more than reached the ocean from Chernobyl.” Buesseler reported this radiation gusher continues. “It is incorrect to say that Fukushima is under control when levels of radioactivity in the ocean indicate ongoing leaks, caused by groundwater flowing through the site and enhanced after storms,” he wrote.

  • The worst airborne radiation spill in 25 years: Like the Chernobyl disaster that spread radiation across the Northern Hemisphere, Forbes reported March 28, 2011 that the US EPA recorded Fukushima’s radioactive iodine-131 in rainwater in Pennsylvania and Massachusetts at levels above the max allowed in drinking water. The EPA’s air monitoring also found Fukushima’s radioactive iodine-131 in California, Colorado, Hawaii, Washington, and Nevada. Nothing close to this immense, hemisphere-wide radiation dispersal had happened since Chernobyl in 1986.
  • Japanese foods were tainted widely. Traces of radioactive cesium were found in popular baby formula according to Japan Today, Dec. 7, 2011. How many hundreds of thousands of babies had eaten it? The Japan Times reported April 22, 2011 that Fukushima’s iodine-131 was detected in the breast milk women living near Tokyo, 150 miles from the meltdowns. The public demanded an investigation into the impact on mothers and babies. In April 2013, Japan’s Ministry of Health reported that cesium-137 and cesium-134 found in produce and rice crackers 225 miles away from Fukushima “are high enough to cause residents to exceed the annual radiation exposure limit in just a few months, or even weeks.”
  • Fukushima is the world’s worst reactor disaster by volume of fuel melted and waste in cooling pools. Major reactor meltdowns at Santa Susanna in California (1959), Windscale in England (1957), Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania (1979), or Chernobyl in Ukraine (1986), involved a single fuel inventory. Fukushima’s meltdowns involve three reactors’ full of melted and mangled fuel rods, and an additional 1,573 uranium fuel rods in damaged condition in damaged pools of cooling water. The three masses of melted fuel may never be recovered much less containerized.
  • Fukushima caused the largest evacuation in the history of nuclear power: 160,000 evacuated from the zone first set at 12, and later expanded to 19 miles. (116,000 were forced to leave Chernobyl’s dead zone.) Two weeks after the start of the meltdowns, people from between 12 to 19 miles away were encouraged to “voluntarily evacuate.” The US government recommended that US citizens stay 50 miles away.
  • Of the colossal volumes of radioactive debris produced by the catastrophe, the New York Times listed these on March 2017: 400 tons of contaminated cooling water produced every day since March 11, 2011; 3,519 containers holding 60,000 tons of radioactive mud or sludge; 64,700 cubic meters of discarded protective clothing; branches and logs from 220 acres of deforested land; 200,400 cubic meters of radioactive rubble; and 3.5 billion gallons [17 million cubic yards] of radioactive soil. According to Greenpeace, 11 million tons of this radioactive soil is to be being incinerated, spreading new airborne contamination. (Will the resultant contaminated soil itself be collected and incinerated.)
  • This most vexing of reactor disasters has seen ever-changing estimates of the amount of radiation released. The amount released to the air was “twice as large as previous estimates by research institutions both in Japan and overseas,” according to a Feb. 2012 report by the Meteorological Research Institute. The volume and variety of radioactive waste is astounding. Greenpeace reported in December 2017 that while heavily contaminated towns like Iitate and Namie had topsoil scraped off from populated areas, the problem remained because the soil removal left “islands … which are surrounded by forested mountains, for which there is no possible decontamination.” Consequently, the cleaned-up areas “are subject to recontamination through weathering processes and the natural water and lifecycle of trees and rivers.” Because of how long cesium-137 persists in the environment, “this will be an on-going source of significant recontamination for … 300 years.”
  • The failed “ice wall” made to divert groundwater away from the reactors’ foundations — smashed and cracked by the earthquake — means that hundreds of tons of water keeps pouring every day into the wreckage of reactor chambers where it is contaminated by contact with the masses of melted uranium fuel, and either rushes out to sea or is collected for filtration in the failed Advanced Liquid Processing System (ALPS).
  • The notorious failure of the APLS, intended to partially clean up highly contaminated cooling water and groundwater, means that one-million tons of waste water now held in 1,000 giant tanks near the coast is not cleaned up at all, and must be filtered again by an as-yet-unknown method that needs to be designed and engineered from scratch. Meanwhile the tanks are vulnerable to another earth quake that could happen any time. Japan Times reported March 29, 2018, “Seven years on, radioactive water at Fukushima plant still flowing into ocean.”

*Detailed well-documented reports by Greenpeace provide some of the best background and investigative information. See:
* Reflections in Fukushima: The Fukushima Daiichi Accident, Seven Years On,” March 2018 (https://www.greenpeace.org/canada/en/publication/1657/reflections-in-fukushima-the-fukushima-daiichi-accident-seven-years-on/)
* Nuclear Scars: The Lasting Legacies of Chernobyl and Fukushima,” 9 March 2016 (http://www.greenpeace.org/eastasia/publications/reports/climate-energy/2016/nuclear-scars/)
* Fukushima Fallout: Nuclear business makes people pay and suffer,” 16 February 2013
(https://www.greenpeace.de/sites/www.greenpeace.de/files/20130218-Greenpeace-Report-Fukushima-Fallout.pdf)
* “Lessons from Fukushima,” February 2012 (http://www.greenpeace.org/slovenia/Global/slovenia/Dokumenti/Lessons-from-Fukushima.pdf)

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Fukushima Still Plagues Pacific Ocean Fishery, Government & Industry See No Evil

At right, Harrison, British Columbia, where some soil and salmon were found to be contaminated with radioactivity from Fukushima last March. Harrison is 4,600 miles from Fukushima.
By John LaForge

The Japanese fishing community and nuclear watchdog groups are raising alarms over government plans to dump into the Pacific over 1-million tons of highly contaminated waste water from three devastated nuclear reactors at Fukushima.

The London Telegraph reported last October that Japan’s “plan to release the approximately 1.09 million tons of water currently stored in 900 tanks … has triggered a fierce backlash from local residents and environmental organizations, as well as groups in South Korea and Taiwan fearful that radioactivity from the second-worst nuclear disaster in history might wash up on their shores.”

Greenpeace issued a report Jan. 22, 2019 condemning the plan, reminding the public that the owners/operators of Fukushima — Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) — admitted in 2018 that its waste water treatment system (the Advanced Liquid Processing System or ALPS) had failed. “Despite the much-vaunted Advanced Liquid Processing System (ALPS) plant at Fukushima, Tepco has confirmed that levels of strontium-90 are more than 100 times above legally permitted levels in 65,000 tons of water that have already been through the ALPS system,” the South China Morning Post reported last January.

Outrage within the fishing community was palpable during a series of public hearings last year which were designed to convince skeptical observers that pouring more radiation in the Pacific is a good idea. The magnitude-9 earthquake, and the tsunami it caused on March 11, 2011, left more than 27,500 people dead or missing in northeast Japan, and triggered the largest release of radioactivity to the ocean in history.

Dumping Radioactive Water Poisons Fish

Since Fukushima’s triple catastrophe — earthquake, tsunami, and radiation plumes — there has been relentless news of seafood contamination. On Feb. 2, 2019, the Japan Times reported that radioactive cesium far above the legal limit was detected in fish caught off Fukushima, according the Fukushima Prefecture’s Fishery Cooperative Association. Skate, a variety of ray, that was caught over 180 feet deep, was found with 161 Becquerels-per-kilogram of radioactive cesium-137, exceeding the allowable limit of 100.

However, since cesium-137 is a reactor-borne element not found in nature, the established 100 Bq/kg limit is arbitrary. None whatsoever should be “permitted” because any internalized cesium-137 can potentially cause health problems. Any cesium that we eat and which is not excreted, adds to previously ingested radioactive materials. Radioactive water is continuing to flow into the Pacific Ocean from the site of three mangled reactors at a rate of around 2 billion Becquerels a day, according to a 2018 Japanese study, the Japan Times reported March 29, 2018.

Cesium-137 has been found in Canadian fish as well. The Haida Gwaii Observer in Queen Charlotte, B.C. reported last March 16, 2018 on a press release issued by Krzysztof Starosta, a chemist at Simon Fraser University’s nuclear science lab. Starosta reported that in his study, cesium-137 “levels found in both the salmon and soil samples remained below Canada’s safety guidelines, posing minimal health risk to B.C.’s salmon and human populations.” The use of the word “minimal” by Starosta is a trivialization of “some” risk, especially when considered in view of the cumulative effect of eating contaminated fish over a lifetime.

Likewise in the United States, in April 2014 the Oregon Statesman Journal reported on a study by Oregon State University that found that Fukushima radiation in albacore tuna caught off the Oregon coast tripled after the 2011 meltdown. “You can’t say there is absolutely zero risk because any radiation is assumed to carry at least some small risk,” said lead author, Delvan Neville, in OSU’s Department of Nuclear Engineering and Radiation Health Physics. In October of 2012, Albacore tuna caught off Washington and Oregon and Blue fin tuna off of California were also found contaminated with Fukushima cesium.

Since 2016, TEPCO has repeatedly claimed — and news reports repeatedly noted — that its “advanced [ALPS] processes had reduced the cancer-causing radioactive contaminants” such as strontium-90, iodine-129 and ruthenium-106 in the water “to non-detectible levels.” Then, last October, the Telegraph noted, “[T]he ALPS has consistently failed to eliminate a cocktail of other radioactive elements, including iodine, ruthenium, rhodium, antimony, tellurium, cobalt and strontium.” According to the Telegraph, “Iodine 129 has a half-life of 15.7 million years and can cause cancer of the thyroid; ruthenium 106 is produced by nuclear fission and high doses can be toxic and carcinogenic when ingested.”

“In late September [2018], Tepco was forced to admit that around 80% of the water stored at the Fukushima site still contains radioactive substances above legal levels…” the Telegraph said.

TEPCO has admitted for example that in several of the storage tanks, levels of deadly, long-lived strontium-90 are 20,000 times the allowable limit levels set by the government. Pouring this carcinogenic brew into the sea is reckless endangerment of the commons. There ought to be a law.

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Nuclear Power Can’t Survive, Much Less Slow Climate Disruption

By John LaForge
French protestors march against water-wasting reactors. The placard reads: “Nucleocrats, stop your shenanigans, we are scared!”
Donald Trump: “America will never be a socialist country.”

Too late. We already have socialism for the rich, with the nuclear power industry as a prime example.

On a level playing field, nuclear power would go bust. Those owners get financial supports or subsidies that safe renewables like solar power, geothermal, and wind power don’t get. Two particularly large government handouts keep the reactor business afloat, and without them it would crash overnight.

1) In a free market, the US Price Anderson Act would be repealed. The act provides limited liability insurance to reactor operators in the event of a loss-of-coolant, or other radiation catastrophe. The nuclear industry would have to get insurance on the open market like all other industrial operations. This would break their bank, since major insurers would only sell such a policy at astronomical rates, if at all.

2) The US Nuclear Waste Policy Act (NWPA) would also be repealed. NWPA is the government’s pledge to take custody of and assume liability for the industry’s radioactive waste. Without NWPA the industry would have to pay to contain, isolate and manage its waste for the 1-million-year danger period. The long-term cost would zero the industry’s portfolio in a quick “correction.”

Jeremy Rifkin: “From a business perspective, it’s over”

Even if the industry retained the above two subsidies, economists say the reactor business is finished. Jeremy Rifkin — the renowned economic and social theorist, author, political advisor to the European Union and heads-of-state, and author of 20 books — was asked his view of nuclear power at a Wermuth Asset Management global investors’ conference.

Rifkin answered:

“Frankly, I think … it’s over. Let me explain why from a business perspective. Nuclear power was pretty well dead-in-the-water in the 1980s, after Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. It had a come-back. The come-back was the industry saying: ‘We are part of the solution for climate change because we don’t emit CO2. It’s polluting, but there’s no CO2.’

“Here’s the issue: Nuclear power right now is six percent of energy of the world. There are only 400 nuclear power plants. These are old nuclear power plants. But our scientists tell us [that] to have a minimum impact on climate change — which is the whole rationale for bringing this technology back — nuclear would have to be 20 percent of the energy mix to have the minimum, minimum impact on climate change — not six percent of the mix.

“That means we’d have to replace the existing 400 nuclear plants and build 1,600 additional plants. Three nuclear plants have to be built every 30 days for 40 years to get to 20 percent, and by that time climate change will have run its course for us. So I think, from a business point of view, I just don’t see that investment. I’d be surprised if we replace 100 of the 400 existing nuclear plants which would take us down to 1 or 2 percent of the energy [mix].

“Number 2: We still don’t know how to recycle the nuclear waste and we’re 70 years in. We have good engineers in the United States. We spent 18 years and $8 billion building an underground vault in Yucca Mountain to store the waste for 10,000 years, but we can’t use it. It’s already no good because there are cracks in the mountain. But any geologist could have told them we live on tectonic plates and you can’t keep underground vaults secure.

“Number 3:  We run into uranium deficits according to the IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency] between 2025 and 2035 with just the existing 400 plants. So that means the price goes up.

“Number 4: We could do what the French generation of new plants is doing and recycle the uranium to plutonium. But then we have plutonium all over the world in an age of uncertainty and terrorism.

“Finally, and this is the big one that people don’t realize: We don’t have the water. Over 40 percent of all the fresh water consumed in France each year goes to cooling the nuclear reactors. It’s almost 50 percent now. When it comes back [when reactor cooling water is returned to the lakes and rivers] it’s heated and it’s dehydrating our ecosystems, and threatening our agriculture. We don’t have the water, and this is true all over the world. We have saltwater nuclear plants but then you have to put them on coastal regions and you risk a Fukushima because of tsunamis….

“So it’s no accident Siemens [Corporation] is out [of reactor business], Germany is out, Italy is out, Japan is now out… I’d be surprised if nuclear has much of a life left. I don’t think it’s a good business deal.”

Rifkin is not alone in his assessment. William Von Hoene, Senior Vice President of Exelon Corp., said last April 16 at the annual US Energy Association’s meeting, “I don’t think we’re building any more nuclear plants in the United States,” Platts reported. “I don’t think it’s ever going to happen,” Von Hoene said. “I’m not arguing for the construction of new nuclear plants. They are too expensive to construct.”

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Fukushima Filter Failure: A Million Tons of Toxic Water Far Too Radioactive for Release to the Pacific

By Dr. Gordon Edwards
Nukewatch Quarterly Winter 2018-19

Irradiated nuclear fuel is millions of times more radioactive than fresh nuclear fuel, due to the hundreds of varieties of human-made radioactive elements that are created during nuclear fission, many of which remain trapped in the irradiated fuel. See www.ccnr.org/hlw_chart.html

Irradiated fuel is so fiercely radioactive that it generates more than enough heat to melt the core of a nuclear reactor, just by the ongoing disintegration of radioactive atoms, even after the fission process has been completely stopped. Continual cooling of the core is essential after shutdown.

As soon as the 2011 Japan earthquake happened, all three operating reactors at Fukushima-Daiichi were shut off immediately. But nobody knows how to shut off radioactivity. The heat generated by the radioactive waste inside was what melted the cores of those three shut-down reactors at a temperature more than twice the melting point of steel. Lack of backup electricity resulted in lack of cooling. Overheating occurred, and meltdowns soon followed.

Those melted cores are still there, lodged somewhere in the sub-basements of the reactors. The melted fuel still has to be cooled, even seven and a half years after the accident.

Normally, when irradiated fuel is removed from an operating reactor, it is placed in a large pool of circulating water for about ten years. Cooling in such a pool is necessary to allow time for radioactivity levels to drop to the point where irradiated fuel no longer needs forced cooling to prevent spontaneous overheating.

Every day, for the first several years following the triple meltdown, hundreds of tons of water were pumped down into the melted cores and back up again, in order to cool the melted fuel—to prevent it from overheating again, releasing even more radioactivity into the atmosphere and groundwater.

By the time the water was pumped back to the surface it had become heavily contaminated with radioactive poisons that were flushed out of the melted reactor cores. Every day, new steel tanks had to be built at the surface to hold the highly contaminated water—much too radioactive to disperse into the ocean or the local environment. A small forest had to be cut down to make room for even more tanks to hold the radioactive waste water.

Today, there are more than a thousand such tanks covering large areas of land adjacent to the reactor site. These tanks hold about 900,000 tons of radioactive water. More contaminated water is being added to this dismal inventory every week, as cooling of the melted cores continues.

For years now, filtering equipment has been used to “decontaminate” this huge volume of water by removing over 60 varieties of radioactive contaminants. However, tritium (radioactive hydrogen) cannot be removed from contaminated water by any readily available filtration process, because radioactive water molecules incorporating tritium are chemically identical to ordinary water molecules. You cannot filter water from water. The tritium remains.

So, even if all other radioactive contaminants were totally removed, the 900,000 tons of water in storage would still remain heavily contaminated with tritium. For the last couple of years, experts from the nuclear industry have wanted to dump this contaminated water into the Pacific Ocean, claiming that tritium is not one of the most dangerous of radioactive materials.

Tritium gives off no penetrating gamma radiation, but if ingested through contaminated food or water, or inhaled as radioactive humid air, or absorbed directly through the skin, tritium damages living cells. It has been well-documented that tritium is a cancer-causing agent as well as a mutagen and teratogen, altering chromosomes and genes in a random fashion and causing abnormalities in developing embryos. See www.ccnr.org/tritium_1.html .

Moreover, since tritium is biologically and chemically indistinguishable from ordinary hydrogen, it gets built right into the body’s organic molecules, including DNA molecules. Tritium also readily crosses the placenta, entering into the body of a developing child in the womb, resulting in the embryo having a higher concentration of tritium than the mother has.

Tritium is so difficult to control, and so easily dispersed into the air and the water around nuclear facilities, industry experts frequently advocate lax standards and permissive [dispersal] practices regarding tritium. See www.ccnr.org/GE_ODWAC_2009_e.pdf .

Japanese citizens, especially fishermen, do not trust the industry. TEPCO has lied to them repeatedly both before and after the 2011 disaster. These people have fought hard to prevent TEPCO from dumping the contaminated water into the ocean, despite TEPCO’s persistent efforts to browbeat them into submission by repeatedly insisting that tritium is nothing much to worry about.

Water Filtration Has Failed

[In September 2018 it was] revealed that there are dozens of other radioactive contaminants besides tritium in the contaminated water, and that these poisons are present at unacceptably high concentrations. [See report below.] TEPCO has claimed for years that all the radioactive materials had been removed, except for tritium.

It turns out that the previous “removal”… was far from perfect, in part because workers neglected to take the time or make the effort to frequently change filters. When filters get clogged they don’t work very well.

So the “tritium water” that TEPCO was prepared to dump is actually a stew of many other radioactive contaminants such as cesium-137, strontium-90, plutonium-239, iodine-129, and many more.

Beware of industry assurances. Their experts are predisposed to protect the nuclear establishment.

—Gordon Edwards is president of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility.

See: “Water stored at Fukushima nuclear plant still radioactive,” Mari Yamaguchi, AP, via The Toronto Star, Sept. 28, 2018 

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