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.

January 2, 2021 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Radiation Again Reported at Japan’s Summer Olympic Sites & in Tokyo

Nukewatch Quarterly Winter 2020-2021

A new study has found consequential radioactive contamination at scores of sites in areas set for next summer’s Olympic and Paralympic games in Fukushima Prefecture and Tokyo. The study follows on and corroborates a March report by Greenpeace—“Radioactivity on the Move 2020”—that found “the widespread presence of radioactive hotspots in Fukushima City and the (Olympic) J-Village” where “radioactive contamination is not under control.”

The new peer-reviewed article, in the journal Environmental Engineering Science, explains the authors’ study of radioactive dusts and dirt at Japanese Olympic sites and throughout Northern Japan. The report details findings that detected modest radioactive contamination at Olympic venues, and significant contamination at Japan’s National Training Center.

To assess radioactive contamination caused by Fukushima’s triple reactor meltdowns, a total of 146 independent samples were collected from sites in Fukushima Prefecture, Tokyo, and the heavily traveled corridors between these locations.

The study “Radioactive Isotopes Measured at Olympic and Paralympic Venues in Fukushima Prefecture and Tokyo, Japan” reached four major conclusions outlined by the authors:

1) Different types of alpha and beta radioactive micro-particles were released at other times and landed in various locations throughout Japan. “The exclusive use of cesium-137 beta activity levels as a proxy for total internal and external exposure, therefore, introduces dose assessment errors.”

2) “Rooftops previously decontaminated in Minamisoma are re-contaminated by airborne atmospheric dust containing radionuclides … from the Fukushima meltdowns. The data show a need for continuing reassessment and potentially, additional remedial work on many sites in Fukushima Prefecture.”

3) The Tokyo Olympic venues had radioactivities similar to sample sites in the US. In contrast, Olympic sites in Northern Japan near Fukushima contained an average of about twice as much radioactivity as Tokyo, with plutonium identified at the J-Village National Training Center.

4) Non-Olympic sites throughout Japan averaged 7.0 times greater beta activity than the Tokyo Olympic venues. These data show that clean-up efforts emphasized the Olympic venues over cleaning other contaminated parts of Japan.

The Japanese government’s aggressive portrayal of the North and its Olympic sites as decontaminated and safe disregard the health and safety of the athletes, spectators, officials, and journalists who are expected to participate in the games, and of course of the year-round residents. —JL

—Data and links to the peer-reviewed article are available from Fairewinds Energy Education.

January 2, 2021 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Health Risks of Tritium: The Case for Stronger Standards

Nukewatch Quarterly Winter 2020-2021

Editor’s note: Japanese government ministers, nuclear industry lobbyists, and some academics claim that releasing huge volumes of radioactive tritium into the Pacific is so commonplace that the danger it poses to health is negligible. What follows are excerpts from a detailed article about tritium risks by Arjun Makhijani, Brice Smith, and Michael C. Thornel of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, in the group’s magazine Science for Democratic Action, February 2007. The excerpts are introduced by a note from Arjun sent Nov. 25, 2020:

These excerpts regarding tritium refer to tritium-contaminated freshwater. The risks of contaminating seawater with tritium relate to the ways tritiated water will become part of oceanic ecosystems. It will be incorporated, literally, by everything from algae to fish. Pregnant women consuming tritium-contaminated seafood could be vulnerable to impacts like those described in the article excerpted below. A thorough investigation of such impacts, with public comment, is essential before any decision to discharge tritium-contaminated water accumulated at Fukushima to the ocean is made.

—Arjun Makhijani

With a relatively short half-life of 12.3 years, tritium is highly radioactive. For example, one gram (approximately the weight of a quarter of a teaspoon of salt) of tritium in tritiated water will contaminate almost 500 billion gallons of water up to the current drinking water limit of 20,000 picocuries per liter set by the US Environmental Protection Agency. One ounce of tritiated water would contaminate the entire annual flow of the Savannah River above the present drinking water limit.

… [T]ritiated water and organically bound tritium can cross the placental barrier. This tritium can then be incorporated into an embryo/fetus and irradiate rapidly dividing cells, thereby raising the risk of birth defects, early miscarriages, and other problems.

… A related concern is the fact that low-energy beta particles, like those emitted by tritium, are often much more effective at causing harm than currently assumed by regulations.

… As noted, the low energy of the tritium beta particle can result in the deposition of all the energy in a short distance, which could be particularly damaging if the tritium is in the DNA.

… Considering that ova are formed once per lifetime, the effects of radiation on the reproductive system of female fetuses, and the possible effect on the children of females irradiated in the womb, could be significant.

… The increased risks to pregnant women and the embryo/fetus include early miscarriages, malformations, and genetic defects. Risks can also be multi-generational given that a woman’s ova are produced while she is in her mother’s womb.

… We have concluded that 400 picocuries per liter for surface water should be considered as an interim target limit for off-site surface water at all nuclear power plants and US Department of Energy nuclear sites while a better understanding of the impacts of tritium is developed. This level is 50 times lower than the EPA’s current drinking water limit and corresponds to a lifetime risk of a fatal cancer of about one in a million.

… The case for tightening the tritium limits as a preventive measure is even more persuasive when one considers the higher RBE [relative biological effectiveness] of tritium, its possible non-cancer health effects, its possible synergisms with chemical toxins, and its potential effects arising from exposure in utero at certain crucial times during pregnancy….

—See the full article at: https://ieer.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/SDA-14-4.pdf

October 11, 2020 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Fukushima Wastewater & Cleanup Costs Pile Up

Nukewatch Quarterly Fall 2020

By John LaForge

At Fukushima-Daiichi in Japan, the triple disasters of earthquake, tsunami and three reactor meltdowns have caused the deaths of 15,899 people and left 2,529 unaccounted for, mostly in the three hardest-hit prefectures, according to the National Police Agency.

The ferociously radioactive melted fuels that burned into the hard foundations of the three reactors are also extremely hot thermally and must be continually cooled with water which is poured into the wreckage.

This cooling water also becomes highly radioactive after coming in contact with the molten reactor fuel and so is being collected in large, hastily built tanks on the coastal reactor site. Tokyo Electric, or Tepco, has collected nearly 1.2 million metric tonnes (2,204.6 pounds) of contaminated water in about 1,000 tanks. The collected waste water also includes rain and groundwater that runs across the melted cores after pouring through earthquake-caused cracks in reactor foundations.

Tepco says it will run out of space for more tanks in two years, and is lobbying vigorously to win permission to dump the waste water into the Pacific Ocean.

South Korea, the fishing community and other near Pacific neighbors have raised strenuous objections to any such dumping, especially after Tepco admitted it lied about its water filtration system which turns out had not removed dangerous cesium, strontium and other radionuclides from the water.

Nevertheless, Japan’s government, the International Atomic Energy Agency and industry lobbyists appear willing to reject public opinion and the concerns of allies in order to save Tepco from financial collapse. Last January 31 a panel of experts picked by the Ministry of International Trade and Industry recommended that the pollution be piped into the Pacific Ocean.

In March this year Tokyo Electric Power Co. estimated that 1.37 trillion yen ($12.9 billion) will be needed over 12 years to remove the melted reactor fuel just from units 2 and 3.

The wrecked fuel in unit 1 presents such a vexing complex of problems that the firm didn’t venture a guess at its removal cost.

August 1, 2020 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Japan’s Failed Water Filtration System Praised by IAEA

By John LaForge

Nukewatch Quarterly Summer 2020

An official review by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) of Japan’s efforts to manage nearly 1,000 million gallons of radioactive wastewater at Fukushima says that a team of its experts “welcomed progress” made by Japan on choosing how to dispose of 1.37 million cubic meters of radioactive wastewater left from cooling the extremely hot mounds of melted uranium fuel cores under the three melted and exploded nuclear reactors.

The IAEA reported on April 2, 2020 that, “Contaminated water from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station is treated through a process known as Advanced Liquid Processing System (ALPS) to remove radionuclides except tritium and then store it on site.”*

The IAEA went as far as to declare that “The ALPS multi-nuclide removal system continues to operate stably and reliably.”

Remarkably, the glowing report on Japan’s efforts ignored the spectacular and widely-reported failure of ALPS to separate deadly radioactive isotopes other than tritium on August 18, 2018.**

Vast quantities of highly radioactive particles were not caught by the ALPS and are now stored in giant tanks on the coastal Fukushima-Daiichi site. This coastline is still subject to regular and potentially severe earthquakes that could see the tanks ruptured and on-site workers and the Pacific Ocean highly contaminated in the event of another quake.

The gross failure of the ALPS is reportedly being addressed by “re-filtering” the highly contaminated wastewater through the same system, but this “do over” by the on-site operators is not mentioned by the IAEA expert panel.

The report notes instead that, “With the volume of ALPS-treated water expected to reach the planned tank capacity of approximately 1.37 million m³ around the summer of 2022, and taking into account that further treatment … would be needed for implementation of any of the solutions considered by the Government of Japan, a decision on the disposition path should be taken urgently engaging all stakeholders.” The panel also said, “The IAEA Review Team also notes that the ALPS-treated water will be further purified as necessary to meet the regulatory standards for discharge before dilution.”

The panel’s “specific advisory point one” is that, “The injected water used to cool the fuel debris mixes with ingressed water and contributes to the generation of contaminated water.”

The phrase “ingressed water” is a veiled reference to the tons of ground water steadily pouring into the wrecked reactor buildings through earthquake-caused cracks in foundations, broken pipes, and smashed ductwork. This groundwater also floods the melted masses of uranium fuel and becomes highly contaminated.

Tepco (operator of the Fukushima reactor), the Japanese government and the IAEA want to dump the vast volume of radioactive wastewater into the ocean.

The Japan Times reported March 25 that the company has drafted a plan to spend 20 to 30 years draining the large tanks into the Pacific.

Any dumping would add the wastewater’s extremely long-lived radioactive materials, to that already poured into the Pacific by the 2011 disaster, and the nine continuous years of the sites releasing between 200 and 400 tons per day of contaminated water.

Radioactive materials littering the ocean and the ocean floor can be consumed by sea life where the isotopes bio-accumulate and bio-concentrate as they climb the food chain and find their way into seafood, pet food and fertilizer.

Several countries on the Pacific Rim still refuse to import fish from the area. Taiwan is demanding a cease to the pollution of the water. Consequently, Japan’s fishing community fiercely opposes any ocean dumping of Tepco’s private wastewater problem.

* “IAEA Follow-up Review of Progress Made on Management of ALPS Treated Water and the Report of the Subcommittee on Handling of ALPS treated water at TEPCO’s Fukushima-Daiichi Nuclear Power Station.”

** “ALPS System at Fukushima No. 1 Plant Failing to Remove More Than Tritium From Toxic Cooling Water,” Kyodo News Service, The Japan Times, Aug. 19, 2018, ; “Fukushima Plant’s ALPS Treatment System In Trouble,” Water Technology.com, Aug. 27, 2018; Citizen’s Nuclear Info Center, (Tokyo) “Current State of Post-Accident Operations at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station.” April 3, 2020

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

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