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.

May 2, 2023 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Twelve Years Later Fukushima

State of Nuclear Emergency Still in Effect, Deaths and Health Damages Unaccounted for, Pacific Wastewater Dumping Planned

By Mari Inoue

15,000 Fukushima residents sought criminal prosecution of TEPCO execs responsible for the nuclear disaster, but their acquittal was upheld January 2023. Signs read “All Acquitted” and “Wrongful Decision.”

Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Disaster
Twelve years have passed since the beginning of the ongoing Fukushima Daiichi triple nuclear reactor disaster. It started on March 11, 2011, after the Great East Japan Earthquake hit the area, damaging the electric supply to the reactors’ cooling systems. Subsequent 14-meter-high tsunamis swept over the facility’s 10-meter-high seawall, destroying the emergency generators, and causing a ‘station blackout.’ Consequently, the facility lost its ability to cool the reactors’ cores in Units 1, 2, and 3.

Declaration of Nuclear Emergency
A state of nuclear emergency was declared the evening of March 11. The Prime Minister’s office initially announced that no radiation was leaking from the facility and that residents should stay home and not evacuate. After losing ability to cool the three nuclear reactors’ cores, a triple nuclear meltdown occurred. There were hydrogen explosions at reactors. A large amount of radioactivity began being released into the environment. More than 160,000 Fukushima residents were forced to evacuate from their hometowns.

Evacuation Zones
Due to radioactive releases from the three crippled reactors, the Japanese government expanded the evacuation zone to about a 12.5-mile radius. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Committee (NRC) and State Department recommended U.S. citizens in Japan to evacuate within a 50 mile radius of Fukushima Daiichi.

Twenty mSv-per-year Standard
Japan’s evacuation zones were established based on an external radiation exposure level of 20mSv (a millisievert is a measure of health risk from ionizing radiation) per year. This is a threshold 20 times higher than both Japan’s pre-Fukushima disaster national standard for the public and the international standard (set by the International Commission on Radiological Protection). Japan continues to ignore international radiation protection principles.

Poor Regulation and Collusion
In July 2012, the Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission chartered by the Diet, Japan’s Parliament, concluded that the nuclear disaster was a human-made disaster caused by poor regulation and collusion between the government, the reactor’s owner Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO), and Japan’s nuclear regulator. The Commission accused TEPCO and regulators at the nuclear industrial safety agency of failing to take adequate safety measures, despite authoritative evidence and warnings from eminent seismologists that the area was susceptible to powerful earthquakes and tsunamis.

Twelve Years Later
The state of nuclear emergency is still in effect. Tens of thousands of Fukushima residents are still displaced. The government lifted evacuation orders for many districts in Fukushima and terminated housing assistance and other benefits for evacuees. As of December 2022, 338 Fukushima children (who were 18 or younger in 2011) were diagnosed with thyroid cancer. This is alarming, because pediatric thyroid cancer cases in Japan were only 1 or 2 per million before the disaster.

Disaster-related Deaths
As of June 2022, the official number of the so-called “disaster-related deaths” in Fukushima Prefecture had reached 2,333. These deaths refer to those who died due to the aggravation of injuries caused by the Great East Japan Earthquake or due to the physical burden of evacuation life. This figure is much higher than those of Miyagi Prefecture (930 deaths) and Iwate Prefecture (470 deaths), which were also heavily impacted by the earthquake and tsunamis.

Criminal Case Against TEPCO Executives
In 2012, a group of nearly 15,000 Fukushima residents sought criminal prosecution of those responsible for the nuclear disaster. Accordingly, three former TEPCO executives, including the chairman and VPs, were indicted in 2016. In September 2019, the Tokyo District Court concluded that there was insufficient evidence to convict them. The case was appealed. In January 2023, the Tokyo High Court upheld acquittal of those executives, finding them not guilty of professional negligence resulting in deaths and injuries on the grounds that they could not have predicted the tsunami that damaged the nuclear reactor.

Civil Suit Victory Against TEPCO Executives
A civil case was filed in Tokyo in 2012 by TEPCO shareholders since the disaster caused a huge financial loss to the company. In July 2022, the Tokyo District Court ordered the above three former executives and former President of TEPCO to pay 13 trillion yen ($95 billion) in damages to compensate shareholders, but not the victims. This ruling marks the first time a court has found former executives responsible for the nuclear disaster.

Image designed by Tony Sahara of Manhattan Project for a Nuclear-Free World.

Million Metric Tons into the Pacific
On April 13, 2021, the Japanese government announced that it will start discharging more than 1.3 million metric tons of radioactive “treated” wastewater from Fukushima Daiichi into the Pacific starting in Spring of 2023. The dumping will continue for three decades or more. The “treated” water contains radioactive isotopes due to being used to cool the highly radioactive melted cores of the three nuclear reactors. Tritium and carbon-14 cannot be filtered out at all. [Editor’s Note: TEPCO acknowledged over 75% of the wastewater was not successfully filtered and still contained over 60 hazardous radioactive materials including strontium-90, cesium-137, and cobalt-60.]

Independent human rights experts appointed by the UN Human Rights Council have expressed deep regret at Japan’s decision. Fukushima residents, fisheries associations, most of Fukushima’s districts, and many anti-nuclear groups in and outside Japan expressed their opposition to the plan. Henry Puna, Secretary General of the Pacific Islands Forum calls for Japan to hold off on any such release.

Global Action to Oppose Dumping Plan
Groups are holding a global action to halt Japan’s outrageous plan to dump radioactive water into the Pacific. Check mp-nuclear-free.com to join.

— Pacific Islands Forum, Feb. 6, 2023; “338 Children with Thyroid Cancer – Fukushima Health Survey,” Our Planet, Dec. 2; Reuters, Jul. 13, 2022; Reconstruction Agency of Japan, June 2022

— Mari Inoue is a lawyer and activist based in New York City, born and raised in Tokyo, and co-founder of Manhattan Project for a Nuclear-Free World (mp-nuclear-free.com).

May 2, 2023 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Japan to Delay Ocean Dumping of Contaminated Wastewater from Fukushima

By John LaForge

PhotoCredit:https://eandt.theiet.org/content/articles/2021/04/contaminated-water-from-fukushima-nuclear-plant-to-be-released-into-the-ocean/.

Japan announced in January that the government would delay plans to pump over 1.37 million metric 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, Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno acknowledged “the need to gain public support” for the plan, the Associated Press reported January 12. Public hostility toward the plan increased February 22, when the government approved TEPCO’s proposed reduction in wastewater monitoring; it okayed cutting the number of isotopes in released water that it will monitor from 64 to 30.

Fierce criticism of the 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 said the government wants to postpone the dumping – by the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) – until it is “verifiably safe to do so,” Thomas Heaton reported February 16 to Hawaii’s Civil Beat news outlet.

Anti-dumping pressure by the PIF, independent countries from whose waters up to half of the world’s tuna is sourced, was crucial in forcing Japan’s apparent retreat. The PIF has warned that contaminating the water could harm the fishing that island economies depend on. Mari Yamaguchi reported for the AP January 12: “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 has 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, told the PIF January 18.

Japan announced in April 2021 that it would allow TEPCO to pump the collected wastewater into the Pacific. TEPCO has said the process will take 30 to 40 years using an underground and undersea tunnel now under construction. Media attention has focused on the radioactive tritium in the waste, which cannot be removed by filtering, and has ignored long-lived carbon-14 which likewise cannot be removed.

Mostly unreported has also been the collapse of TEPCO’s filter system which was supposed to separate dozens of long-lived radioactive elements from the cooling water, including ruthenium, cobalt, strontium, cesium, and even plutonium, but has not done so. Dr. Buesseler told Science magazine in 2020, “Many other isotopes are in those tanks still, and over 70 percent would have to be cleaned up further before they might even consider releasing….”

The water becomes contaminated (150 tons every day) after being poured over hundreds of tons of melted, radioactive uranium fuel – and plutonium in Reactor 3 – deadly hot wreckage amassed deep inside the foundations of the three destroyed nuclear reactors. Reactor 3 suffered a huge hydrogen explosion on March 14, 2011, and it was packed with “mixed oxide” fuel made of uranium and plutonium. Hydrogen explosions also caused severe damage to Reactors 1 and 2, and to the waste fuel pool of Reactor 4.

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

April 16, 2023 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

G7 endorses Japan’s Fukushima water discharge plans — Or does it?

Nukewatch Notes: Japan’s Nippon.com news service reported April 16 that the “G-7 Stops Short of Welcoming Fukushima Water Release”, while Greenpeace International announced the same day that the “G7 endorses Japan’s Fukushima water discharge plans.” Readers have to consider multiple sources and study the details.

Nippon.com: “G-7 Stops Short of Welcoming Fukushima Water Release“

Apr 16, 2023 20:25 (JST) Sapporo, April 16 (Jiji Press) — Environment and other ministers of the Group of Seven major powers Sunday stopped short of welcoming Japan’s plan to release treated water from the meltdown-stricken Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant.

In a joint statement adopted at their two-day meeting in Sapporo, Hokkaido, the G-7 climate, energy and environment minister expressed their support for an International Atomic Energy Agency review of the planned release of the water from Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc.’s <9501> power plant in the northeastern prefecture of Fukushima.

The final statement does not include a passage seen in an early draft that said the ministers welcome steady progress of decommissioning work at the plant, including efforts toward the release of the treated water based on scientific evidence and consistent with the IAEA’s safety standards.

At the TEPCO plant, radioactive water keeps increasing, as the company continues cooling molten nuclear fuel with water while groundwater flows into reactor buildings damaged by the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami.

The contaminated water is processed through purification equipment, but the equipment cannot remove tritium, a radioactive substance. TEPCO will dilute the water before releasing it into the ocean. [Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]

Greenpeace International: “Ignoring science, environmental protection and international law – G7 endorses Japan’s Fukushima water discharge plans. Legacy of Fukushima disaster shows nuclear energy is no solution to energy and climate crisis.”

16 April 2023 3 min read 0 Comments

Sapporo, Japan – The nations of the G7 have chosen politics over science and the protection of the marine environment with their decision today to support the Japanese government’s plans to discharge Fukushima radioactive waste water into the Pacific Ocean.The 1.3 million cubic meters/tons of radioactive waste water at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, currently in tanks, is scheduled to be discharged into the Pacific Ocean this year. Nations in the Asia Pacific region, led by the Pacific Island Forum, have strongly voiced their opposition to the plans.[1]Some of the world’s leading oceanographic institutes and marine scientists have criticised the weakness of the scientific justification applied by TEPCO, the owner of the nuclear plant, warned against using the Pacific Ocean as a dumping ground for radioactive contaminated water, and called for alternatives to discharge to be applied.[2]

“The Japanese government is desperate for international endorsement for its Pacific Ocean radioactive water dump plans. It has failed to protect its own citizens, including the vulnerable fishing communities of Fukushima, as well as nations across the wider Asia Pacific region. The aftermath of the nuclear disaster at Fukushima is still strongly felt, and the Japanese government has failed to fully investigate the effects of discharging multiple radionuclides on marine life. The government is obligated under international law to conduct a comprehensive environmental impact assessment, including the impact of transboundary marine pollution, but has failed to do so. Its plans are a violation of the UN Convention Law of the Sea.

The marine environment is under extreme pressure from climate change, overfishing and resource extraction. Yet, the G7 thinks it’s acceptable to endorse plans to deliberately dump nuclear waste into the ocean. Politics inside the G7 at Sapporo just trumped science, environmental protection, and international law,” said Shaun Burnie, Senior Nuclear Specialist at Greenpeace East Asia.

Greenpeace East Asia analysis has detailed the failures of liquid waste processing technology at the Fukushima Daiichi plant and the environmental threats posed by the releases.[3]There is no prospect of an end to the nuclear crisis at the plant as current decommissioning plans are not feasible. Furthermore, the report finds the nuclear fuel debris in the reactors cannot be completely removed and will continue to contaminate the ground water over many decades.[4]

Claims that the discharges will take 30 years is inaccurate as in reality, it will continue into the next century. Viable alternatives to discharge, specifically long term storage and processing, have been ignored by the Japanese government.[3]

The Japanese government’s attempt to normalise the Fukushima nuclear disaster is directly linked to its overall energy policy objective of increasing the operation of nuclear reactors again after the 2011 disaster. 54 reactors were available in 2011 compared to only ten reactors in 2022, generating 7.9% of the nation’s electricity in FY21 compared to 29% in 2010.[5] Meanwhile, five of the other six G7 governments led by France, the US and the UK are also aggressively promoting nuclear power development.

“The idea that the nuclear industry is capable of delivering a safe and sustainable energy future is delusional and a dangerous distraction from the only viable energy solution to the climate emergency which is 100% renewable energy. The global growth of low-cost renewable energy has been phenomenal – but it has to be much faster and at an even greater scale if carbon emissions are to be reduced by 2030. Approval for nuclear waste dumping and nuclear energy expansion sound like the 1970’s but we have no time for such distractions. We are in a race to save the climate in the 21^st century, and only renewables can deliver this,” said Shaun Burnie. ENDS

Notes:

[1] Pacific Islands Forum, Japan must work with the Pacific to find a solution to the Fukushima water release issue – otherwise we face disaster”, 4 January 2023

[2] The 100 U.S. based institutions of the National Association of Marine Laboratories (NAML) which includes SCRIPPS and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, 12 December 2022 “Many of the radionuclides contained in the accumulated waste cooling water have half-lives ranging from decades to centuries, and their deleterious effects range from DNA damage and cellular stress to elevated cancer risks in people who eat affected marine organisms, such as clams, oysters, crabs, lobster, shrimp, and fish. We urge the Government of Japan to stop pursuing their planned and precedent-setting release of the radioactively contaminated water into the Pacific Ocean and to work with the broader scientific community to pursue other approaches that protect ocean life; human health; and those communities who depend on ecologically, economically, and culturally valuable marine resources.”

[3] Greenpeace East Asia “Stemming the tide 2020 : The reality of the Fukushima radioactive water crisis report” 2020

[4] Sato Satoshi, “Decommissioning of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station”, March 2021

[5] World Nuclear Industry Status Report – 2022

Contact:

Mitsuhisa Kawase, Senior Communications Officer, Greenpeace Japan: mitsuhisa.kawase@greenpeace.org – +81 (0)70-3195-4165

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/

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.

G7 endorses Japan’s Fukushima water discharge plans — Or does it?

Japan to Delay Ocean Dumping of Contaminated Waste Water from Fukushima

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

State of Nuclear Emergency Still in Effect, Deaths and Health Damages Unaccounted for, Pacific Wastewater Dumping Planned

By Mari Inoue

By John LaForge

By John LaForge

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

Environment Ministry to Experiment with Dispersing Contaminated Soil

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

Environment Ministry to Experiment
with Dispersing Contaminated Soil