Quarterly Newsletter

July 31, 2023 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Domino Effect: 12-Year Series of Failed Fixes at Fukushima

By John LaForge

Japan’s record-breaking earthquake and tsunami waves of March 2011— which first smashed the reactors’ foundations and the electrical grid, then destroyed back-up power generators — led to a “station blackout” and the meltdown of three large reactors at Fukushima Daiichi.

At the time, Tokyo Electric Power Co. (Tepco) had refused to upgrade its sea wall to a sufficient height, although the firm had been warned of the risk of extreme tsunamis. The result was a catastrophic, unprecedented simultaneous triple reactor meltdown: a radioactive pollution catastrophe that has never before been seen on Earth.

Although Tepco’s cost-cutting on the sea wall was only the first in a string of pollution-intensive failures that have followed like dominoes, it led in July 2022 to convictions of four top Tepco executives for negligence and a fine of $92 billion. Tepco itself had predicted in June 2008 that the site could be hit by a tsunami over 50 feet in height after a major earthquake.

**South Korean protesters lampooned Japanese authorities who said you could drink the 1.37 million tons of radioactive wastewater they intend to pump into the Pacific Ocean.**

In the 12 years since the meltdowns, Tepco’s disaster response efforts, always heralded as “fixes,” have been a series of hugely expensive failures: the “advanced” wastewater filter system “ALPS” has failed; the groundwater “ice wall” barrier has failed; containers made for radioactive sludge left by ALPS have failed; and plans to deal with millions of tons of collected debris now kept in plastic bags are being fiercely resisted by Japanese citizens.

Tons of cooling water is still poured into Fukushima’s triple wrecks every day to keep the hot melted fuel from again running amok. Additionally, groundwater continues to gush through countless foundation cracks and fissures caused by the earthquake, into what’s left of the structures’ sub-floors. All this water becomes highly radioactive as it passes over and through the three giant masses, some 880 tons, of melted and mangled uranium and plutonium fuel.

You read that right. Fukushima’s destroyed reactor No. 3 was using “mixed oxide” fuel made with plutonium, which is a major piece of the three deadly corium masses. (See sidebar on this page.) This plutonium contaminates not just the cooling water and groundwater contacting the melted fuel, but the ALPS apparatus and its filters, and the containers used to store the highly radioactive waste sludge extracted by ALPS.

Failed ALPS means million-tonne do-over

Tepco’s jerry-rigged system dubbed Advanced Liquid Processing System (ALPS) has never worked as planned. “The ALPS system failed to reduce radioactive elements, as claimed by the owner,” Power Technology, reported June 2, 2021. Senior East Asia Greenpeace researcher Shaun Burnie wrote in June 2023, “The ALPS has been a spectacular failure.”

Tepco has repeatedly said ALPS would remove 62 radioactive materials — all but tritium and carbon-14 from the continuously expanding volume of wastewater. Some of the deadly isotopes picked up when the water runs over and through the three melted masses of reactor fuel include cesium, strontium, cobalt, ruthenium, carbon-14, tritium, iodine, plutonium, and over 54 others.

Consequently, Tepco says it will re-filter over 70 percent of the 1.37 million tonnes of wastewater stored in giant tanks on site. Approximately 875,000 tons of contaminated water must be put through the system again, a process that will leave behind more of the highly radioactive and corrosive waste sludge.

Shaun Burnie’s reporting on ALPS is worth quoting at length:

“About 70 percent or 931,600 cubic meters of the wastewater needs to be processed again (and probably many more times) by the ALPS to bring the radioactive concentration levels below the regulatory limit for discharge. Tepco has succeeded in reducing the concentration levels of strontium, iodine, and plutonium in only 0.2 percent of the total volume of the wastewater, and it still requires further processing. But no secondary processing has taken place in the past nearly three years. Neither Tepco nor the Japanese government [have] said how many times the wastewater needs to be processed, how long it will take to do so, or whether the efforts will ever be successful. Greenpeace reported on these problems and why the ALPS failed nearly five years ago, and none of these issues has been resolved.”

Ice wall also melts

Tepco intended to reduce the volume of groundwater gushing into the reactor building foundations by digging a $350 million “ice wall” into the earth between the destroyed reactors and the mountains behind. The company placed 1,568 heavy pipes filled with coolant 90 feet deep. It was to freeze the ground to form a deep impenetrable barrier, diverting groundwater to either side of the destroyed six-reactor Fukushima complex and prevent it seeping inside. It has failed to do so. In 2016, the Times of London reported that the scheme had only a “minor impact” on the volume of groundwater rushing in, which at the time still averaged 321 tonnes a day. Tepco announced then that it would retrofit the system and fix the leaks, but Science/The Wire reported in January 2022 that the company had admitted that its ice wall was “partially” melting. About 150 tonnes per day still gushes in.

Filtered sludge burning through containers

The ALPS filter has produced over 4,000 large containers filled with highly radioactive slurry and sludge left from the treatment.

Like the use of the word “advanced” in the name of the failed ALPS machinery, the heavy cylinders used for the caustic, highly radioactive sludge are called “High Integrity Containers” or HICs. In fact they are made of plastic and have degraded far faster than Tepco anticipated.
By March 2, Tepco had filled 4,143 containers, according to the daily Asahi Shimbun. At 30 cubic feet each, the cylinders now store a total of about 124,290 cubic feet of the highly radioactive sludge that will soon require expensive repackaging and, eventually, isolation from the biosphere for thousands of years.

Over two years ago, on June 8, 2021, Japan’s Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) announced that 31 of the containers had “exceeded their lifespans” and were corroded badly enough by the harsh toxic material that they must be replaced. The NRA also warned that another 56 cylinders would need replacing within two years.

Japan’s Mainichi newspaper reported that the government regulators blamed Tepco for “underestimating the radiation the 31 plastic cylinders were exposed to.” The company then claimed it would start moving the contents to new containers.

The Asahi Shimbun reported April 27, 2023, that the HICs must be stored in concrete boxes that can block radiation.

Rad waste to be dumped, deregulated

As we go to press, Tepco has begun testing its large tunnel, with which it intends to begin dispersing 1.37 million tonnes of contaminated wastewater into the Pacific Ocean. The government has steadfastly ignored fierce local and international opposition to the plan from the fishing community, marine scientists, Pacific Island nations, environmentalists, South Korea, and China. So far only South Korean politicians have suggested bringing international legal action against the dumping.

Since the 2011 meltdowns spewed radioactive materials broadly across Japan’s main island, some 22-million tonnes of cesium-contaminated soil, leaves, and debris have been scraped from the ground and stored in large bags. Citizens are struggling desperately prevent authorities from using the radioactive waste in road building or burning it in incinerators. The bags are currently stacked in tens of thousands of piles all over the region.

Even more protest was raised last February when the NRA announced it would allow Tepco to severely weaken its monitoring of radioactivity in the dumped waste. The NRA said it reduced the number of radioactive elements to be measured from 64 to 34.

The environment minister of Hong Kong, a coastal metropolis of 7.5 million people, charged in June that Japan is “violating its obligations under international law and endangering the marine environment and public health.” Minister Tse Chin-wan wrote in the daily Ta Kung Pao that the city would “immediately prohibit imports of seafood caught off the coast of Fukushima prefecture.”

– CGTN, April 23, 2023

July 31, 2023 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Plutonium Spread Long Distances from Fukushima

Photo Credit: Shohei Miyano/Kyodo News via AP

By John LaForge

Very few reports of the Fukushima catastrophe have mentioned plutonium contamination. Yet plutonium was used in fuel rods in Fukushima’s reactor 3 which was destroyed by meltdown and several hydrogen explosions.

Following the March 14, 2011 explosion at reactor 3, experts worried about the release of the extremely dangerous radioactive substances. Then a week later, on March 21 and 22, Tepco announced that it had detected plutonium in soil collected from its compound.

Plutonium is one of the most toxic substances known to science, and fine particles are far more biologically hazardous than larger particles.

Now, studies published in the journals Science of The Total Environment, Nov. 15, 2020, and Chemosphere, July 2023, report that researchers found that cesium and plutonium “were transported over long distances,” and that deposits of them were recorded in “downtown Tokyo,” about 142 miles from the meltdowns.

According to the authors, very high concentrations of radioactive cesium were released during the accident as particles referred to as “cesium-rich microparticles” (CsMPs). The researchers say CsMPs they found are mainly composed of silicon, iron, zinc, and cesium, and minor amounts of radioactive tellurium, technetium, molybdenum, uranium, and plutonium.

The studies, involving scientists from six countries and led by Associate Professor Satoshi Utsunomiya, a researcher at Kyushu University, found that “plutonium was included inside cesium-rich microparticles that were emitted from the site.”

Radioactive CsMPs released from Fukushima are a potential health risk through inhalation. “Given the small size of the particles, they could penetrate into the deepest parts of the lung, where they could be retained,” Utsunomiya wrote. “The route of exposure of greatest concern is inhalation,” the authors reported, because plutonium, lodged in the lungs, can “remain for years.”

Utsunomiya summed up his team’s work saying, “It took a long time to publish results on particulate Pu from Fukushima … but research on Fukushima’s environmental impact and its decommissioning are a long way from being over.”

May 2, 2023 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

U.S. Energy Market Interests Fuel Ukraine War

By Lindsay Potter

The nuclear industry has demonstrated a long list of failures including costliness, vulnerability, and toxicity. Operators deny the impossibility of safely handling waste from nuclear reactors. Currently, radioactive wastewater is slated for dumping from the Eastern Coast of the United States to Japan’s Pacific Coast. Every natural disaster near a nuclear site risks releasing deadly radiation, poisoning water and soil, and depressing local communities. Of the world’s nuclear reactors, 20 percent are vulnerable to earthquakes. The Santa Susana Field Laboratory and Los Alamos National Laboratory are in areas prone to massive wildfires. The Navy dry docks servicing nuclear submarines in Bangor, Washington, closed bays to study risks of seismic activity. Turkey’s recent devastating 7.8-magnitude quake damaged areas near Incirlik Air Base, where the U.S. stores 50 nuclear warheads, and yet Turkey plans to build even more new fragile reactors. In France, reactors shutdown due to lack of cooling water from rising temperatures and dried up rivers.

The world has also witnessed what disaster nuclear sites can unleash through human error at Chernobyl and Three Mile Island, and now potentially at Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station. Cataclysmic meltdown and radioactive release have been avoided despite blackouts and nearby strikes, but Ukraine’s 15 reactors, six of which sit at Zaporizhzhia, are all time bombs awaiting an errant missile.

Yet there is a current surge for new nuclear technology that diverts hundreds of billions of dollars away from proven renewable sources of cleaner and cheaper energy. In response to shortages of Russian energy, from sanctions and the war in Ukraine, Europe is walking back commitments to ween off of nuclear and switch to renewables. Belgium deferred plans for a 2025 exit from nuclear, extending the life of two reactors by ten years. Germany pushed off the slated 2022 closure of its remaining three reactors. The U.K. plans to build eight new reactors. In January, Sweden green-lighted legislation to construct new reactors. Not to be outdone, in February, Poland announced plans to construct 79 Small Modular Nuclear Reactors (SMNRs) by 2038 in addition to six other reactors, including the Westinghouse AP1000 (despite the fact two U.S. Westinghouse reactors now under construction at Vogtle in Georgia are seven years behind schedule and over budget at $30 billion). The U.S. loaned $3 billion to Romania on a contract, scooped from China, to build several new reactors. Yet, last year, French power company EDF reported a $19 billion loss. Half of France’s 56 reactors shuttered for repairs, and its nuclear energy production fell by 30%, leaving one of the world’s most nuclear-powered nations a net importer of energy in 2022.

On February 10, 2023, one of the reactor units at Khmelnytskyi Nuclear Facility shut down.

Most unbelievably, Ukraine’s energy minister announced an order for two new Westinghouse AP1000 reactors for the Khmelnytskyi facility, despite last November’s emergency shutdown of the site’s two current reactors due to missile attacks. Ukraine’s reactors in the war zone present an unprecedented threat of global catastrophe, reiterated by the UN and IAEA. The world holds its breath in hopes each bout of shelling fails to spill Zaporizhzhia’s more than 2,000 tons of highly radioactive spent fuel, a prospect made only riskier by reports Ukraine is stashing Western-supplied arms at nuclear reactor sites.

Rather than defending democracy or sovereignty, the U.S. and NATO and their nuclear-backed tyranny pursue, via proxy war, economic and technological dominance. Biden’s sanctions and attack on the Nordstream pipeline resulted in Europe buying more expensive U.S. fracked gas. Still, Russia found outlets for its oil and gas. Exxonmobil took home a record-breaking $56 billion in profits for 2022. Yet Europe needed $640 billion in energy subsidies through the winter to stabilize the disrupted market. African countries were largely unable to cushion the shocking thirty-year-high energy cost spike, another example of African citizens suffering under the political machinations of wealthier nations.

After one year of war in Ukraine, the ripples across the global economic landscape – from cold homes in Europe to famine in the horn of Africa – prove this war is about energy. It should be no surprise, as U.S. arsenals shift from Europe to the Pacific, one harbinger of war in Asia is new nuclear energy policy. After years of increased military presence, arms sales, drills, and missile testing, Japan moves further from its nuclear taboo, and the U.S. continues to antagonize China and intervene on the Korean Peninsula. Japan has now approved draft legislation to allow limitless longevity for reactors, prolonging operation of some to 60 years. As part of their return to nuclear, Japan pledged to build 20 “next-generation” reactors to replace those scheduled for decommissioning. North Korea has increased plutonium processing. South Korea will add more nuclear reactors in lieu of promises to add new renewable energy infrastructure. South Korea and Japan sit under the U.S. nuclear umbrella, but analysts are clamoring at the possibility the two nations could develop their own nuclear arsenals.

From construction of new reactors, to growth in the market for U.S. natural gas, to unfathomable profits for weapons manufacturers whose contracts are inextricably linked with the nuclear power industry, the energy crises caused by the Ukraine war serve U.S. interests – albeit not the interests of the hungry, poor, sick, or unhoused. It is important to note, in the same year, renewables produced more energy than ever before and the affordability and accessibility of renewable technology grew. Though we are still on a cusp of transition, projections continue to confirm renewables can provide faster, cleaner energy than nuclear. Essential energy decisions cast the specter of two very different paths: a future that builds human and environmental well-being or a future of unabated avarice.

— un.org, Feb. 13, 2023; Reuters, Jan. 11, 2023; BBC, Oct. 18, 2022

May 2, 2023 by Nukewatch 1 Comment

John’s Letter from Jail

Artist Mark Taylor’s rendition of Uncle Sam and his German doppelganger sentencing John LaForge.

January 15, 2023

This month has three important political anniversaries, anti-war and anti-nuclear holidays if you will, events I’ll celebrate privately for a change, since I’m temporarily cooling my heels in a German prison on the west end of Hamburg. It’s not that I killed or robbed very many people, but I have acted contemptuously toward the court system here and have refused to cooperate with its deeply corrupt and dishonest protection of the nuclear weapons establishment.

Because Susan Crane and I had the gall to occupy the top of a nuclear weapons bunker that holds U.S. hydrogen bombs here in Germany, and then refused to apologize by paying a fine for trespassing, the court has decided that seven weeks in this modern prison ought to mend my ways, or at least discourage other abolitionists.

The three war-weary events are Martin Luther King Day, January 16; the second anniversary of the entry into force of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, January 22; and the yearly setting of the “Doomsday Clock,” January 24 – that weirdly formulaic gauge of nuclear armageddon’s likelihood concocted by a group of scientific nuclear eggheads.
The establishment of the MLK holiday and of the TPNW were both monumental achievements made against fierce, wealthy, bigoted, and colonialist forces of reaction. Advocates of nonviolent action and campaigners for a world free of nuclear weapons this Monday and next Sunday, then get back to work Tuesday when the alarm goes off again on the Doomsday Clock. Of course the clock’s “up one year, down the next” assessment of nuclear war risks has been ignored as a worn out rewrite of the Chicken Little tale. Yet the five metric tons of plutonium dust that was lofted into the upper atmosphere by nuclear weapons tests is all making its way back down to Earth. So yes, Mr. Watson, in fact the worst part of the sky is falling.

Dr. King and opposition to nuclear weapons will always be connected in my mind because MLK said, “We have guided missiles and misguided men” and “the ultimate logic of racism is genocide,” and because nuclear weapons are nothing if not genocidal.

Dr. King’s books, and the hard-won triumphs of the fearlessly nonviolent Civil Rights Movement, inspired a group of us in the 1980s to repeatedly blockade the entrance to the Grand Forks Air Force Base in North Dakota which then controlled 150 land-based, long-range nuclear-armed missiles. Over a ten-year period, our band of nuclear resisters served enough county jail time after staging so many marches, protests, and stunts – once pouring blood across the 100-ton concrete lid of a locked-and-loaded Minuteman III missile silo – that when the Air Force later decided to eliminate over half of its land-based missiles, the Grand Forks nukes were some of the first to go.

Our small group efforts were encouraged back then by news of hundreds of thousands across Europe who took to the streets demanding – successfully, it turned out – the ouster of U.S. Cruise and Pershing missiles. Any prospective use of the weapons was almost universally viewed in Europe as suicidal.

We never know if our demands will be realized – only that nothing is gained without venturing. Anti-nuclear marchers in the ‘80s never guessed they’d see the UN General Assembly vote 122-to-3 to endorse a treaty banning nuclear weapons. This overwhelming majority of the world’s governments have agreed that nuclear weapons can only produce massacres, that any chance of a successful medical response to their effects is impossible, that these effects would illegally cross neutral borders, do long-term criminal damage to the environment, and then recoil to maim and destroy the very militaries that unleash them. (That’s why I wrote “B61 = Suicide” on the weapons bunker just before being detained.)

Today, the groundbreaking TPNW has permanently shamed and stigmatized the nuclear weapons states as hypocrites, scofflaws, and rogues who ridicule and ignore the treaty’s means while cynically claiming to desire its ends.

The nine-member thermonuclear cartel, like a gang of coldblooded mobsters, acts outside and above the law by rewarding their judicial, police, and prison authorities for the cover they provide – authorities who then wink and pretend that the protection racket is necessary and that the Bomb is legal.

Maybe our marching, our rebellion, and the law of nations can’t denuclearize the cabal of atomic weaponeers. Maybe the nuclear mobsters won’t re-direct their war chests to useful purposes before they run our earthly train off the rails. But then nothing changes unless we demand it.

— Written by John LaForge

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By John LaForge

Failed ALPS means million-tonne do-over

Ice wall also melts

Filtered sludge burning through containers

Rad waste to be dumped, deregulated

By John LaForge

By Lindsay Potter

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