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Fukushima’s Triple Meltdowns, Seven Years On*

By John LaForge
Spring Quarterly 2018

March 11 marks the seventh anniversary of the Great Eastern Japan Earthquake and tsunami that killed over 18,000 people. The quake destroyed the foundations and pipes of the Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear reactor complex, and caused a tsunami that crashed the site’s emergency back-up generators resulting in a “station blackout” and the world’s only simultaneous triple reactor meltdown. The consequent mass radiation releases, mass evacuations and mass contamination of the Pacific Ocean are unprecedented. Only the 1986 Chernobyl disaster compares to Fukushima, although its radiation was dispersed largely to the atmosphere rather than the sea.

One of the first books on the subject was Takashi Hirose’s Fukushima Meltdown: The World’s First Earthquake-Tsunami-Nuclear Disaster. This passage from the introduction is a reminder of the avoidable risks of operating nuclear reactors in earthquake zones:

“…the fact that there is no way of putting an end to earthquakes and tsunamis is … something that we must accept….

“However, the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant Disaster is neither a natural disaster nor ordained by fate. It is a human-made disaster brought about by bad faith. Unlike natural disasters, which are beyond human understanding, this was easily predictable and preventable. The officials of Tokyo Electric Power Co. [Tepco] say things like, ‘We could not imagine that a once-in-a-thousand-years earthquake might come,’ and ‘The tsunami was beyond our expectation,’ but these are only obfuscations. A major earthquake accompanied by a nuclear power plant accident was—as I will show in detail—something very much within the realm of possibility, a possibility these officials arrogantly refused to consider.

“If I, neither a scholar nor a specialist, was able to foresee this, and the nuclear power specialists from Tepco and from the government’s nuclear-related agencies were not, then for what do they exist?”

Minister Opposes Ocean Dumping Contaminated Water in Pacific

Japan’s disaster reconstruction minister announced at a press conference last July 15 that he opposes dumping contaminated cooling water from the disaster-struck Fukushima Daiichi site into the sea, citing protests by local fishermen. While the minister has no control over how the waste water will be disposed, his comments came after several experts endorsed the ocean dumping.

About 770,000 tons of waste water has been collected in over 900 densely crowded tanks on site, and the amount grows by 150 tons a day. With limited acreage Tepco officials have said it can keep adding tanks only until 2020, and the tank farm is vulnerable to earthquakes that could spill the waste.

The water becomes highly radioactive when it is poured over wreckage inside the three reactors in order to cool the three masses of “corium”—the hot uranium fuel and its cladding melted into a giant mass that has partially burned through the foundations. Most of the water is then treated in an experimental process that removes many radioactive materials but not the tritium, the radioactive form of hydrogen.

Reconstruction minister Masayoshi Yoshino spoke shortly after Takashi Kawamura, chairman of Tepco Inc., which owns the reactors and caused the catastrophe, said in an interview that the decision to dump the contaminated water “has already been made.”

Kawamura’s remarks were widely condemned and a Tepco spokesperson made a retraction saying, “The chairman meant to say that the decision to release is not yet final.” Minister Yoshino also asked dumping advocates “not to drive (fishermen) further towards the edge,” alluding to concern among local fishermen about the effects on their livelihood if the fish and other marine products they catch were to be contaminated.

Misinformation About Tritium**

Reporting about the millions of gallons of radioactive waste water accumulating at the Fukushima site, major media have called tritium harmless. Kyodo News Service said last July: “Tritium is a radioactive substance considered relatively harmless to humans.” The London Independent said last November, “Treatment has removed all the radioactive elements except tritium, which they say is safe in small amounts.” The Institute for Energy and Environmental Research (IEER) notes that these assertions directly contradict the US Environmental Protection Agency’s Fact Sheet on tritium. That fact sheet says tritium is one of the “least dangerous radionuclides” but reminds readers that “As with all ionizing radiation, exposure to tritium increases the risk of developing cancer.” IEER notes, “The established science is that there is no threshold for cancer risk of radiation and therefore no level of exposure is ‘safe.’”

High Radiation Levels Found Outside Reactors

Tepco still knows so little about the state of the deadly melted fuel inside the three reactors that the most the company could say in January about its latest remote-controlled probe inside Unit 2 was, “the radiation reading [8 Sieverts] was taken near what appeared to be fuel debris.” (emphasis added). The harsh radiation environment inside the wrecked reactors is so novel and deadly that robotic probes and containment equipment haven’t yet been devised and have to be invented whole cloth. Seven years in, Tepco hasn’t yet positively located the melted fuel debris inside all three reactors.

What surprised the January inspectors was a reading of 42 Sieverts per/hour “outside the foundations of the reactor.” Mycle Schneider, an energy consultant and lead author of the World Nuclear Industry Status Report, told the Independent, the company “hasn’t a clue what it is doing,” in decontaminating and securing the complex.

Richard Black, director of the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit, said that the high radiation reading from outside the foundations is “more of a concern as the cause is at present unclear.” Schneider said more directly, “I find it symptomatic of the past seven years, in that they don’t know what they’re doing.”

* For a detailed review of the ongoing Fukushima catastrophe, see “Key figures for the seventh anniversary,” published Feb. 17 by the group ACROnique Fukushima. The group offers daily monitoring of events related to the current radiation disaster in Japan, and more.

** For an excellent analysis of the dangers of exposure to tritium, see author Dahr Jamail’s Aug. 2017 report “Fukushima Plant Is Releasing 770,000 Tons of Radioactive Water Into the Pacific Ocean.”

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The Dark Side of the Wall

Through the Prism of Nonviolence

By John Heid
Over 3,000 immigrants have died in the Arizona desert since January of 1999 according to the group Humane Borders. Above, Alonzo Rangel makes notes about the body of a
woman in her 20s found near Falfurrias, Texas. (Photo by
Don Bartletti/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)

For years I have felt an edgy tug, like a rip tide, drawing me closer to La Frontera, the US-Mexico border and its wall, the great divide. Last June I finally gave in. I packed my books and sourdough starter and headed two and a half hours west of Tucson to a copper mining community-gone-bust, Ajo, Arizona. It is quintessential small town America, southwestern style.

Ajo has one zip code, one stop light, one grocery store, three gas stations, and three coffee shops. Add to that a mechanic’s garage, two hardware stores, a library, and three private clubs. There is no Walmart, no McDonald’s, no local police department, no hospital, and never a traffic jam except on winter weekends when tourists travel main street—headed to the beaches of the Sea of Cortez, an hour and a half south.

Javelinas, also known as Collared Peccary or skunk pig, roam the streets at night, and coyotes stroll the sidewalks by day. We can see the Milky Way from the historic, palm tree-lined plaza, downtown. Yes, there is little light pollution and few clouds here.

At a glance this town looks like a Norman Rockwell print: idyllic. The postcards at the local gift shop, like the Ajo Red Raider High School yearbook, show our best side. Yet Ajo has another side, a shadow side. It is the shadow of the Wall. Ajo is just 39 miles from the border with Mexico. Thus, well within the 100-mile perimeter of an enhanced border enforcement zone which encompasses the entire United States. This is the wall’s 100-mile shadow even where there is no physical barricade. Some residents call this region a Constitution-free zone. It is the political equivalent of the frost-free bioregion Ajo enjoys. The latter fosters the growth of extraordinary flora; the former permits extra-legal practices that are, at best, constitutionally challenged.
The military-style US Border Patrol checkpoints are a prime example. Nobody leaves Ajo without passing through one—no one. They can be an annoyance for caucasians, but a civil rights violation for people of color, nationality notwithstanding. There are also the home incursions that are unwarranted—literally and figuratively. The incidence of these invasions is markedly higher on the nearby Tohono O’odam Nation than in town. Several years ago, in one of the more dramatic incidents within Ajo proper, three men at prayer were wrested from their pew at the local Catholic Church and arrested just before Mass. In mid-January of this year two patients and a humanitarian aid worker were apprehended in a private clinic. Most of these incidents happen outside public view and are not deemed fit to print in our weekly paper, The Ajo Copper News.

Residents south of the checkpoints live in a state of low-intensity occupation, a form of psychological warfare and a strategy designed to keep people subliminally on edge. Towers equipped with rotating cameras, ground sensors, helicopter fly-overs, and the dull hum of drones remind us that we are being watched—all of us. The escalating number of military personnel and the increase in unmarked government vehicles add to the specter of surveillance.

For most people however, Ajo is, and has been, a place to pass through, or overwinter. The town is situated squarely in a region that has been an historic crossroad for indigenous peoples in a network that stretched from present day Mexico to Utah and from the Pacific coast to New Mexico. Now, as then, the year-round residents are a fraction of the number of those who pass through. Each winter our population more than doubles with the arrival of mostly retired, mostly northern US residents in their recreational vehicles or to their second home. Add to that figure the high volume of tourists we see every winter weekend bound for the beaches of Puerto Peñasco, in Sonora, Mexico.

Migrant Death Map. Source: Humane Borders. Data development by John F. Chamblee, Michael Malone and Mathew Reynolds.

With the ever expanding militarization of the US-Mexico border, we have also witnessed a veritable odyssey of people from the south traversing the harsh Sonoran desert terrain and walking through or around town. To one degree or another these passersby all experience “the shadow.” For northern tourists, it is a potential wrinkle in their vacation, like a long wait at the checkpoint. For our neighbors to the south, it’s another story entirely. The shadow, for many of them, is the shadow of death. Nearby Cabeza Prieta is the most lethal National Wildlife Refuge in the country, and neighboring Organ Pipe, the deadliest National Monument. The number of recovered human remains on these federal lands accounts for a significant percentage of the overall fatalities in the entire Tucson Sector of the border.

It is not uncommon for people crossing by night from the south, to slip past the public campsites of vacationing northerners at Organ Pipe. One seeking reunion, the other recreating together. Herein lies a slice of the pathos and paradox of life in the shadow.

Every wall casts a shadow. Our nation’s immigration policies and enforcement have constructed hundreds of miles of border wall, and there’s a vigorous push for more. Take warning from those of us who live on the nation’s rim: the shadow is always longer, darker, and more insidious than the object that casts it—concrete, wrought iron, or racism.

—John Heid works with the group No More Deaths in Ajo, Arizona.

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Faked Reactor Inspections Bring Fine

Nuclear Shorts

Spring Quarterly 2018

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission slapped a $145,000 fine on Southern Co. for falsifying records of inspections at Plant Votgle, 30 miles southeast of Augusta, Georgia. According to news accounts, “at least” 13 workers at Southern Nuclear Operating Co., a subsidiary of Southern Co., signed off on inspections of equipment and conditions in units 1 and 2 that never happened. The system operators falsified inspection records by entering data into electronic logs, between August and October 2016, indicating they had done the work. The required inspections are for Votgle’s two operating reactors, the 41-year-old Unit 1, and 39-year-old Unit 2, not the two that are currently under construction. The violations happened multiple times, a NRC press release says. The company has 30 days to pay the fine or challenge it. Southern Co. is building two new reactors at the site, Units 3 & 4, the only nuclear power reactors to be approved in 30 years, but the projected construction cost estimate has doubled to more than $25 billion.

The Southern Co. fraud case is similar to Xcel Energy’s fraud at its Monticello reactor on the Mississippi River in central Minnesota. In late 2013, Xcel managers failed to monitor the testing of welds on heavy casks holding highly radioactive waste fuel. They then falsified reports about their safety-related tests on the canisters, which are stored onsite, outside, above ground, indefinitely. —Washington Examiner, the Aiken Standard, & Bloomberg, Feb. 21, 2018; Star-Tribune, July 28, 2015.

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Court Sympathizes with Arms Bazaar Resisters

Nuclear Shorts

Spring Quarterly 2018

In spite of nine guilty verdicts at Stratford Magistrates Court in Scotland, there was commendation from judges for protesters who blocked entrances to London’s ExCel Centre last Sept. 6, disrupting the delivery of military gear to the world’s largest arms bazaar, the Defense and Security Equipment International “Arms Fair.” Protesters were charged with obstructing the highway during “No To Nuclear Day” which turned a spotlight on the participation of nuclear weapons builders BAE Systems, Rolls Royce, Babcock International, Thales, and Lockheed Martin. Coordinated by the Campaign Against the Arms Trade, protesters blocked both entrances to the ExCel site causing considerable disruption to Fair preparations. Nine protesters were fined less than £200, and the district judge commended them for their passion and for acting out of concern for the public interest.

Angie Zelter, one of the defendants, said, “both judges have shown sympathy …. Perhaps they too recognize that the real criminals are those who make a squalid profit out of conflict and preparations for nuclear war. I feel our protest and today’s court appearance have been very effective is raising public awareness and concern about the blatant trade in the tools of death. We must never fall into the trap of thinking that peaceful direct action is a waste of time.”

—Trident Ploughshares, Jan. 12, 2018

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Climate Threatens Far-Flung US Military Bases

Nuclear Shorts

Spring Quarterly 2018

Contradicting the Trump administration’s bogus denial that climate change is underway, the Pentagon reported in late January that extreme weather events brought on by rising global temperatures is affecting half of the 3,500 US military sites around the world with floods, droughts, and wildfires. It found that almost 800 US bases were affected by drought, 350 by extreme heat, 225 by flooding during storm surges, and over 200 by wildfires.

The US military has long understood that climate change is a threat to US security. A 2014 Pentagon report declared climate change to be a “threat multiplier” that can create terrorists. Newsweek and Reuters reported October 10 that year on a Pentagon report that declared climate change the sort of global threat that can foster terrorism. The Reuters analysis said, “The Department of Defense has dramatically shifted its views towards climate change, and has already begun to treat the phenomenon as a significant threat to national security. Climate change, the Pentagon writes, requires immediate action on the part of the US military.” Ignoring these facts, Trump’s December 2017 “National Security Strategy” and his January 2018 “National Defense Strategy” both avoided any mention of climate change at all. In a  slap at this obfuscation, the new Pentagon report warns that climate change is “impacting stability in areas of the world where our troops are operating today.” And notes for example that severe drought exacerbated the Syrian civil war.

—USA Today, Feb. 1, & Weather.com, Jan. 31, 2018; Newsweek, Oct. 10, 2014

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