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January 18, 2014 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Fukushima Two Years On: Dirty Job with No End in Sight

The earthquake and tsunami that wrecked the Fukushima-Daiichi reactor complex in Japan has led to the toughest radiation disaster cleanup ever. Contaminated water is still poisoning the Pacific Ocean — and it could take over 40 years to complete a partial cleanup. 

Nukewatch Quarterly Winter 2013-2014
By Ian Sample / The Guardian 

Carefully, gently, one-by-one. The removal of nuclear fuel rod assemblies from a badly damaged building at the Fukushima-Daiichi power plant is finally under way. Months in the planning, the job is risky, complex, and crucial. Here begins the first major step in the toughest decommissioning project ever attempted. 

Fukushima is home to six nuclear reactors, three of which were running when the giant [earthquake and] tsunami swept across the site on March 11, 2011. The de-fuelling operation centers on the building for reactor four. Though the reactor was shut down for maintenance when [the 9.0 magnitude quake and] the towering wave struck, all its radioactive fuel, and more from earlier runs, was held in a storage pool on an upper floor of the building. 

Under normal conditions, the storage pool above the reactor was a safe haven. But four days into the crisis a hydrogen explosion tore through the structure and blew the walls and roof off. Moving the radioactive fuel from the wrecked building to a more secure site became a high priority. Some fuel assemblies have already been moved. Workers use a crane to reach down into the pool, lift an assembly from its rack, and then lower it into a waiting cask that sits upright on the pool floor. When a cask is full — each can take 22 fuel assemblies — a second crane hoists it from the pool and places it on a trailer. Filled casks are then transported to a more secure storage facility on the site. 

The procedure sounds straightforward enough. But there are 1,533 fuel assemblies in the pool at building four. Each is [15 feet] long, and holds up to 80 individual fuel rods. The team of 36 workers that are responsible for the job will work in six shifts around the clock. The job will take until the end of 2014 — and that is with no glitches. 

But the work at reactor four is only the start. Once the fuel is removed to a safer place, workers will turn their attention to a further 1,573 fuel rod assemblies held in similar pools in the buildings for reactors one, two and three. All were running when the [quake and] tsunami struck; all suffered meltdowns. The radiation in these buildings is still intense, and access inside is limited. 

Though delicate and painstaking, retrieving the fuel rod assemblies from the pools is not the toughest job the workers face. More challenging by far will be digging out the molten cores in the reactors themselves. Some of the fuel burned through its primary containment and is now mixed with cladding, steel and concrete. The mixture will have to be broken up, sealed in steel containers and moved to a nuclear waste storage site. That work will not start until after 2020. 

To fully decommission [disassemble] Fukushima-Daiichi might take 40 years, and no one expects a cakewalk. Independent researchers point to the litany of mishaps that has blighted the cleanup. They doubt the site’s operator Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) is up to the task, and want a global team of experts to take over. Even high-level advisers signed up by Tepco describe the [disassembling] project as an “unprecedented” challenge. At stake is Tepco’s reputation, the health and livelihoods of local communities and the future direction of the industry worldwide. 

“With the sheer number of things that are going wrong, they should be more openly bringing in help,” says Ken Buesseler, a senior scientist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in Massachusetts, who has analyzed seawater for radiation directly offshore from Fukushima. “Tepco is a nuclear power producer, not a cleanup operation. There are people with expertise in decommissioning reactors, and they need to be brought in whether they are Japanese, European or American. Every time they have a problem, they come up with a solution that takes a long time to bring in, and then doesn’t even solve the problem.” 

Tepco does have international advisers. In the wake of criticisms over its handling of the crisis, the company set up an independent Nuclear Reform Monitoring Committee. The Committee is led by Dale Klein, former Chairman of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). His deputy is Barbara Judge, former head of the UK Atomic Energy Authority. They do not underestimate the long job ahead: this is make-or-break time for Tepco.

Whose story is the most believable? 

Who should the public trust? In nuclear issues it can be hard to know. The engineers with most experience, those best placed to make a dangerous site safe, are industry insiders. Nuclear is their livelihood. But who does not have biases? Are anti-nuclear activists better qualified, more honest? Are academics more independent? University staff who work on nuclear technology are often funded by, or have close links to the industry. Perceived biases can be just as harmful to trust as real ones. 

John Large, a UK-based nuclear consultant, says Tepco needs more outside help. He wants the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to arrange for a team of engineers with hands-on experience to assess the site, and come up with a fresh plan of action. But he concedes there are problems with the idea. Industry engineers will defend the industry, he says. “They need to be told: ‘Forget the fact that you design these reactors. Right now we need your expertise.’” 

Tepco has planned heavily to reduce the danger of another high-profile mishap while it removes fuel from the storage pool at unit four. Engineers have beefed up the cranes that will move the fuel. If a fuel assembly jams in its rack, the crane should stop pulling immediately, to reduce the risk of breakage. A second crane that lifts the cask is designed to hold its load even if power is lost. All these will help. A dropped nuclear fuel assembly will not go critical, but more radiation might escape. That may not be dangerous beyond the site, but it could be the final straw for Tepco’s reputation. 

“We haven’t had a problem of this magnitude before in decommissioning,” says Barbara Judge. “When you’re dealing with decommissioning a reactor where there’s been an accident you have to respond to difficulties. When you’re dealing with decommissioning a reactor that’s reached the end of its productive life, you are being proactive and you can do it in a much more slow and methodical manner.” 

Good news is hard to find around Fukushima. In the earliest days of the crisis, a plume of radioactive material blew northwest from the site and settled as a teardrop scar reaching more than [16 miles] across the land. From the coastline, through the towns of Okuma, Futaba and Namie, are huge patches of ground where the additional annual dose of radiation is more than 50 millisieverts. Natural background radiation, from cosmic rays and sources in the air and rock, reaches 2 to 3 millisieverts per year. 

A preliminary IAEA report in October on efforts to clean up the contaminated land … made a handful of gentle suggestions for improvement. Yet the work is far behind schedule in seven of 11 selected towns and villages; the deadline of March 2014 is now unachievable. This month, officials in Japan admitted for the first time that thousands of evacuees from the worst affected areas may never return home. The governing Liberal Democratic Party says a more realistic approach is needed: it wants compensation for the 160,000 people displaced by radioactive [contamination], so they can rebuild their lives elsewhere.

Contaminated water storage problems multiply 

Up on the cliff overlooking the Fukushima [complex] is a bleak reminder of an ongoing battle at the site. This strip of land was once filled with trees, a place for workers to go walking. Tepco has cut the trees down now, to make room for 1,000 huge metal storage tanks. They hold more than 360,000 tons of radioactive water, enough to fill 140 Olympic swimming pools. The volume rises every day. Over the next three years, Tepco wants to add storage for another 270,000 tons of radioactive wastewater. Ultimately, the water must be returned to the Pacific [according to Tepco]. … 

The steady accumulation of contaminated water is in part down to geology. The three reactors that were running when the tsunami struck are kept cool by flushing them with 400 tons of water each day. The process leaves the cooling water laced with radioactive contamination. But Fukushima sits at the bottom of a hill, on land with a high water table. Hundreds of tons of water drain down the hill every day, quietly beneath the surface. When this subterranean flow reaches the [site’s wreckage], it enters the cracked reactor buildings and mixes with the contaminated cooling water. Much is pumped out and passed through a filter made with zeolite clay, which removes dangerous cesium isotopes. But the other radioactive substances remain. This water, around 300 tons a day, is pumped into the storage tanks up on the hill. 

From the start some scientists questioned Tepco’s decision to store contaminated water. Another earthquake could rupture the tanks and see another major radioactive release from the site, they feared. So far, Tepco has been spared that particular disaster, but the concerns are still justified. Smaller accidents have been rife. In August, workers discovered that 300 tons of radioactive water had leaked from one of the tanks. The radiation emanating from the puddle left on the ground was enough to give a bystander the industry’s five-year maximum permissible dose in just one hour. In October, half a ton of contaminated water spilled on to the ground and may have drained to the sea, when tanks overflowed with rainwater. 

“It’s clearly something they need to get a handle on,” Allison Macfarlane, chair of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, told the Guardian. “Water is a big issue for them, but they’ve also got to keep the reactor cores cool, and they’ve got to clean it up.” 

Tepco has taken on a US consultant, Lake Barrett, who led the NRC’s cleanup of Three Mile Island, the worst commercial nuclear power accident in [US] history. “It’s certainly confidence-shaking to hear about spills and inadvertent releases from the [wreckage]. Even though the radioactivity levels are quite small, the public certainly doesn’t have trust and confidence in Tepco’s ability to do the more important things like the de-fuelling, and that is a problem for them,” he says. 

In a November report, Tepco said it had set up 15 specialized teams to replace old bolt-fastened tanks with welded ones, install water level gauges, and up the number of patrols that inspect the tanks for leaks. While two thirds of the storage tanks are welded steel vessels, more than 300 are makeshift, added in haste to increase capacity at the site. They are made from steel sheets that are bolted together and sealed with plastic packing. 

Water stored in the tanks is contaminated with a host of radioactive substances. One of the most troubling is strontium-90, which mimics calcium when it gets into the body. The substance concentrates in bones, so even low levels in the environment can build up over time and become harmful. When released into the ocean, strontium works its way into fish bones, which can make catches unfit for consumption. The hazard will last a long time: strontium’s radioactivity takes 30 years to fall by half [— 300 years to decay to other isotopes]. 

Tepco is trying to decontaminate the water with an “advanced liquid processing system” (ALPS). In principle, the technology can strip all radioactive substances from the water, except tritium …which was spread widely through the environment by nuclear bomb tests in the 1950s and 1960s. Tepco claims the system will ultimately decontaminate more than 500 tons of water a day. But that may be optimistic. The equipment has suffered multiple failures. In the latest setback on [Dec. 1], an ALPS unit was shut down when a pipe began to leak acid. Workers wrapped a vinyl bag around the joint to stem the flow while Tepco investigates. 

Even at a rate of 500 tons a day, cleaning the stored water will take many years. But Tepco must get ALPS up and running. The company then needs to arrange disposal of the treated water, and the radioactive material filtered out by the system. The radioactive waste will go into containers and be sent for long-term storage. The tritium-laced water will be released into the Pacific [if Tepco gets its way], but Tepco has yet to get public support for the move. 

“The problem hasn’t gone away,” says Macfarlane. “The water is cleaner, but you still end up with tritium in there, so they’re going to have some tough decisions about what to do.” 

Fukushima is the first nuclear accident to release large amounts of radioactive material directly into the ocean. Radiation levels surged in seawater after the tsunami struck, with concentrations of cesium-137 recorded at 60 million Becquerels per cubic meter near the reactors. ….

Pacific Ocean contamination ongoing 

Tepco estimates that around 300 tons of contaminated groundwater still flow into the Pacific each day. The levels of radioactivity are small compared with the releases in 2011. Buesseler has measured contamination in water, fish and other organisms from a ship off the coast of Fukushima since the accident unfurled. He … says fish and other marine life will concentrate radioactive substances, making them unsuitable for consumption for years. “We’re not talking about levels that cause direct harm when I’m one kilometer offshore,” says Buesseler. “But through the uptake into the seafood and fisheries, you end up having to keep those closed, and that’s a billion dollar industry and a cultural loss for Japan.” 

Buesseler is critical of what he sees as false reassurances from the Japanese government. “They have said some silly things, [like] it’s ‘largely under control.’ That doesn’t really mean anything when you are out on a ship and you are seeing elevated levels of these isotopes. ‘Under control’ is not a good phrase for the situation right now,” he says. 

Tepco’s latest plan to stem the flow of radioactive groundwater into the ocean is to solidify the soil around the site to form an impermeable “icewall.” This should divert groundwater around the site, and stop it mixing with contaminated cooling water. The project will not be cheap. The Japanese government has pledged £300 million [$490 million] to help build the barrier, insisting that the danger of leaks and spills make the wall essential. Ice wall technology has been effective in the construction and mining industries, but has never been tried on the scale planned at Fukushima. Lake Barrett, the US consultant brought in by Tepco, is skeptical of the plan. “I don’t think it’ll make that big a difference. It’s several hundred million dollars, and some of that might be better spent on an integrated water plan,” he says. 

Even if the ice wall works, it could cause fresh problems. Groundwater flowing out to the ocean keeps seawater from seeping inland at Fukushima. Block that flow, or divert it, and saltwater is sure to encroach. Normally, this would not be a problem. But the soil around Fukushima is laden with radioactive cesium. The substance binds to clay in freshwater conditions, but crucially is released again by saltwater. 

“If you stop the fresh water flowing out, that would very likely cause the cesium in the ground to be released. You then have a pulse, of what is currently in some way safely buried, going back into the ocean,” says Buesseler. “It is certainly something they should think about.” 

More mishaps are inevitable at Fukushima. The [complex] is wrecked and [dismantling] will take decades of arduous, complex work. In Japan and in other countries, the crisis has already dented public confidence in nuclear power. That has harmed their economies, says Judge….. 

Judge said, “The straight story is the Japanese didn’t have a nuclear response plan. There were a lot of human errors during what happened at Fukushima. It was old technology, badly maintained. … Those are the facts. They have to be faced and dealt with.”

Filed Under: Environment, Fukushima, Newsletter Archives, Nuclear Power, Quarterly Newsletter, Radiation Exposure, Radioactive Waste

January 18, 2014 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Radioactive Waste Truck Burns In Ohio

Nukewatch Quarterly Winter 2013-2014

A truck started on fire on Aug. 22, on Interstate-75 near Troy, Ohio. The cargo consisted of 12,000 kilograms of uranium hexafluoride, a radioactive heavy metal that turns into hydrogen fluoride (UF6) — an extremely corrosive and caustic gas — if it comes into contact with water or water vapor. In spite of the hazards posed by the radioactive cargo, the trucking company, RSB Logistic, of Saskatoon, was more worried about media exposure than radiation. The UF6 was in route from Cameco in Port Hope, Ontario, to Kentucky. In spite of the potential for wide-spread contamination, no rules exist in the US or in Canada mandating that the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission or the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission be informed of the incident. 

Brian Hanson of Alberta, Canada, was driving the truck when the brakes ignited. Hanson doused the fire using an extinguisher but didn’t get it completely extinguished. He drove for two miles with reignited flames shooting out of the truck before exiting the highway. At that point, with half the truck on fire, Hanson disconnected the cab from the trailer knowing that the UF6 is heat activated. The fire burned the hair off of Hanson’s arms as he uncoupled the rig. An Ohio Traffic Crash Report said the right side tires, fenders, mud flaps, air hoses, sleeper compartment and passenger side of the cab were destroyed by the fire. 

Hanson is quoted in the Toronto Star saying, “We’re so programmed and told about the danger of a load, and the media danger. We’re basically taught that the media’s like terrorism. We’re supposed to do everything we can to avoid media.” 

Hanson and his wife had to find their own way home from Ohio while RSB Logistic sent a new cab and driver to complete the shipment to Kentucky. 

Canada’s Nuclear Safety Commission absolved itself of all responsibility since the truck started burning in the US. US regulators say it was Ohio’s responsibility. Neither Ohio’s Bureau of Radiation Protection or state emergency management agency had been informed of the truck fire. 

The Toronto Star reported on Nov. 15 that one in seven trucks carrying radioactive materials are pulled off the road after inspection by the Ontario ministry of transportation. Faulty brakes, load security, flat tires, falsified logs, faulty air lines and lack of driver training are among the problems discovered during inspections. 

— Toronto Star, Oct. 31 & Nov. 15; Nuclear Street News Team, Nov. 1, 2013

Filed Under: Environment, Newsletter Archives, Quarterly Newsletter, Radiation Exposure, Radioactive Waste

January 18, 2014 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Italy’s Illegal Dumping Linked to Cancers 

Nukewatch Quarterly Winter 2013-2014

Nukewatch Quarterly has reported previously on illegal dumping of toxic waste by the Italian Mafia. Now, the environmental group Legambiente reports that about 31,000 environmental crimes were committed in 2010, and nearly half involved illegal disposal of radioactive and industrial waste. The majority of the waste was dumped in Campania, a region around Naples — Italy’s third largest city — and sadly the repercussions of this unregulated dumping are registering in the form of an increased number of cancers reported around the dumping area. 

The Italian Senate has begun an investigation into the rise in the number of tumors being diagnosed in Campania. The BBC reports, “Two decades ago doctors noticed that the incidence of cancer in towns around Naples was on the rise. Since then, the number of tumors found in women has risen by 40%, and those in men by 47%.” 

The details of the illegal dumping came to light when ex-Mafia boss Carmine Schiavone was overcome with guilt at the environmental damage he was causing and decided to turn informant. Schiavone turned on his cousin Francesco Schiavone — the head of Camorra, a secret society of criminals loosely based in Naples — and revealed that the mafia family had disposed of contaminated waste all over Southern Italy. They dumped in Lake Lucrino, coastal areas, pastures and 520 drums of toxic waste were even buried in a specially dug quarry. The BBC reported that Legambiente has alleged that 30 or more ships, stuffed with radioactive waste, may have been sunk off the Calabrian coast in suspicious circumstances over the past 20 years. Schiavone also said that radioactive sludge was brought in on trucks from facilities in Germany and dumped haphazardly in landfills at night. Schiavone said, “We disposed of … millions and millions of tons.” 

— The Independent, June 8; BBC, Oct. 29; and The (London) Daily Mail, Nov. 1, 2013 — PVB 

Filed Under: Newsletter Archives, Quarterly Newsletter, Radiation Exposure, Radioactive Waste

January 18, 2014 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Nuclear Wa$te — of Billion$

Nukewatch Quarterly Winter 2013-2014
By Lisa Kasenow 

Editor’s note: 

Cancelled, unused and destroyed reactors give the lie to industry boosters who speak of its “24/7 reliability.” Shutdowns, fires, explosions, leaks, meltdowns and hugely expensive re-builds add up to a record of nuclear malfeasance. The industry has been such a financial failure that Forbes magazine thundered from its Feb. 11, 1985 cover, “The failure of the US nuclear power program ranks as the largest managerial disaster in business history, a disaster on a monumental scale. …only the blind, or the biased, can now think that most of the money has been well spent. … The scale of the US nuclear power program’s collapse is appalling: 75 plants cancelled since 1978, including 28 already under construction…” By 1999, a total of 121 reactors had been cancelled, squandering about $50 billion in 1995 dollars.* Lisa Kasenow sent Nukewatch an outline of the more recent financial disasters: 

1. Ten partially-constructed nuclear power reactors have been cancelled. All 10 were scrapped more than 10 years after they had been ordered, and half were cancelled 18-22 years into construction. Three possible terminations — Tennessee Valley Authority’s Bellefonte 1 & 2, and Watts Bar 2 — are still under construction today, even though these reactor orders date from 1970. 

2. Nuclear power units scratched before construction work had begun number 117, and in most cases the cancellations occurred years after the reactors were ordered. 

Of the 117 reactors abandoned after being ordered, half of them were stopped 4-10 years after being ordered, and 20% were halted 8-10 years after the order was made. 

The TVA wins the gold medal for nuclear wasted money, because it’s responsible for the abandonment of 10 and possibly 11 federally permitted reactors. Bellefonte 1 & 2; Hartsville A1, A2, B1 & B2; Phipps Bend 1 & 2; Yellow Creek 1 & 2 and possibly Watts Bar 2. 

3. There are 21 fully-constructed and licensed commercial reactors that no longer supply electricity. These 21 commercial reactors were in operation for an average of 17 years each. Of these, 14 have high-level radioactive waste (used fuel) on site. 

The longest operating time for one of these reactors is 34 years, while the shortest was under one year. More than half operated for less than 20 years. Twenty-eight percent were operational for less than 10 years. Three Mile Island Unit 2 operated for one year. Pathfinder in South Dakota ran for 30 minutes. Shoreham operated for less than one year and then closed. 

* Arjun Makhijani, The Nuclear Deception,1999, p. xiv. 

— Lisa Kasenow is a retired physics, chemistry & biology teacher and fulltime anti-nuclear activist in Florida.

Filed Under: Newsletter Archives, Nuclear Power, Quarterly Newsletter, Radioactive Waste

October 18, 2013 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Cleanup or Cover-up: Japan’s Improvised Management of Reactor Meltdown Disaster Denied Ongoing Ocean Contamination 

Nukewatch Quarterly Fall 2013
By John LaForge 

On Aug. 20, Tepco acknowledged that 300 tons of highly radioactive water had leaked from one of at least five of the 1,000 storage tanks it has hastily constructed to hold contaminated water (top photo, below). The waste water is generated by the continuous watering-down of extremely hot uranium fuel that has melted through the bottom of three destroyed Fukushima reactors and the hot waste fuel rods stored for decades in the now earthquake-damaged cooling pools. 

Tepco also reported August 20 that measurements of radioactive tritium in seawater near reactor No. 1 are the highest ever recorded — higher than at the height of the company’s deliberate, last-resort dumping of 11,500 tons of primary reactor coolant directly into the ocean in March and April 2011. 

The water is poisoned with cesium, strontium, americium, tritium and other ferociously radioactive isotopes. Tepco says it has not found the spot in the 1,000-ton steel tank from which the water was still leaking, but was transferring the water from the bad tank and removing contaminated soil. 

The company estimated that the radioactivity in the 300 tons amounted to 24 trillion becquerels, or 80 million becquerels per-liter. Reuters interviewed professor emeritus Michiaki Furukawa of Nagoya University who said, “That is a huge amount of radiation. The situation is getting worse.” Hideka Morimoto, a spokesman for Japan’s Nuclear Regulation Authority, told the AP “We are extremely concerned.” 

The leaking tanks were constructed with rubber seams intended to last about five years, and were bolted together rather than welded. According to Tepco, 350 of the 1000 tanks were similarly built on the cheap rather than using welded joints which are more expensive and more watertight.

Continuous ocean contamination, unstoppable leaks 

Tepco’s August acknowledgement of major tank leaks came a month after the company’s belated admission that 300 tons of highly contaminated water have been pouring into the Pacific every day ever since the March 11, 2011 disaster began. These 300 tons of contaminated water per day amounts over 30 months to at least 270,000 tons of water-borne radionuclides, a hemorrhage that continues unabated. 

The company admitted it has no idea where the leaks are located. On July 26, Tepco president Naomi Hirose confessed, “If you asked whether we have adequately learned the lessons of the disaster, the answer would be that we haven’t.” 

The Tokyo daily Asahi Shimbun, reported last December that “A huge volume of highly radioactive water, used to cool down the fuel, has since been leaking from the reactor” and the sources of the leaks were unknown. 

Disaster “out of control” — Tepco executive 

Tepco executive Kazuhiko Yamashita, said Sept. 13, “I think the current situation is that it is not under control.” 

Yamashita’s blunt condemnation flatly contradicted Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s testimony to the International Olympic Committee, given a week earlier, in which the PM claimed “the situation is under control.”

Tank leaks pouring contaminated water into Pacific 

The unprecedented ocean contamination stems from the colossal power of the March 11, 2011 magnitude 9.0 Great Eastern Japan Earthquake — the worst in Japanese history — and the consequent 52-foot tsunami — which smashed the six-reactor Fukushima-Daiichi compound, causing explosions and three reactor meltdowns. 

The meltdowns began spewing a colossal amount of cesium, strontium, plutonium, iodine-131 and other deadly elements to the atmosphere and to the Pacific and in some respects never stopped doing so. 

The bizarre phenomenon of about 400 tons of contaminated groundwater running into the reactor buildings every day is a consequence of the giant quake and its destruction of the six-reactor complex’s underground infrastructure, piping, trenches, tanks and buildings. But because the company’s system of partial decontamination only filters about 100 tons of water per day, 300 tons are running through the destroyed reactor complex and into the Pacific. 

Millions of gallons of water are continuously being poured into the three wrecked reactors and into cooling pools that store tens of thousands of extremely hot and highly radioactive waste fuel rods (“spent fuel”). This cooling water along with groundwater is moving through the massive cracks, breaks and faults and spreading to the sea. 

The company has announced an improved, expensive, untested “freezing” of a one-mile-long section of ground that could block the run-off, but which will not be completed until 2015. It’s also injecting a chemical solution into the coastline embankment as a “solidifying” experiment.

From bad to worse 

In a front-page New York Times article September 4, Martin Fackler called the crisis a “worsening situation.” Fackler is the author of Credibility Lost: The Crisis in Japanese Newspaper Journalism After Fukushima. 

Long before Tepco made its August admission, the magazines Science and Nature reported (in October 2012) that the initial dispersal of radioactivity from Fukushima — both as atmospheric fallout and direct discharges to the Pacific — represented the largest accidental release of radiation to the ocean in history — ten to 100 times more than the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear catastrophe in Ukraine. Co-authored by oceanographer Ken Buesseler, a senior scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, the report said that contamination in fish in the area was so high that large, ongoing releases of radioactively contaminated water must be taking place. 

Buesseler’s allegations were denied for months by both Tepco and the Japanese government. Tepco rebuffed the information even after the chief of Japan’s federal nuclear watchdog agency said the site had probably been leaking contaminated water since the March 2011 disaster began. 

Tepco’s denials and delays have been condemned by experts in harsh terms. According to the Nation August 19, Dale Klein, a past chair of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission blasted Tepco executives, “These actions indicate that you don’t know what you are doing, and that you do not have a plan.” 

Over 430,000 thousand tons of highly contaminated water is being stored in tanks at the site, as Tepco floods the reactors’ cores using an improvised system to cool the melted fuel. Water from the cooling scheme runs into basements and trenches that were cracked open by the earthquake and which have been leaking since the disaster began.

Tank farm radiation leaks at deadly levels 

Tepco said Sept. 3 that it detected a radiation level of 2,200 millisieverts-per-hour near one storage tank — up from a previous high of 1,800 millisievert/hr on August 31. Both levels are high enough to kill an unprotected person in a few hours. Tepco’s earlier radiation estimates of 100 milliseiverts/hr were highly inaccurate because, according Dr. Arjun Makhijani speaking on PBS News Hour, monitors used for the earlier reports maxed out at 100 milliseiverts per hour. 

Thousands of workers occupy the contaminated grounds doing remediation work. Tepco acknowledged in July that 11 times the number of its employees than it had earlier told the World Health Organization have been exposed to high levels of radiation. Tepco now says 10 percent of the workers are at risk of developing thyroid cancer.

Fish stocks contaminated 

With thousands of tons of contaminated water gushing from the reactors, the groundwater and from storage tanks, radioactive contamination is inexorably destroying the fishing industry in Eastern Japan. On September 5, South Korea banned all fish imports from a large area around Fukushima Prefecture. The news sent shock waves through a staggered fishing community that has already suffered several billion in losses. 

Fish of all kinds are being found contaminated with cesium-137 and iodine-131 from the ongoing contamination. In 2011, the Japanese allowed 2,000 becquerels-per kilogram (bq/kg) to contaminate seafood, vegetables, dairy products and mushrooms. In April 2012, the government tightened the limit to 100 bq/kg. 

In July, sea bass caught near Hitachi, Ibaraki, 55 miles southwest of Fukushima, were found contaminated at 1,037 bq/kg — 10 times the 100 bq/kg government limit. Last year, shipments of contaminated Pacific cod were halted by the government. Black sea bream caught 60 miles north of Fukushima had 3,300 bq/kg of cesium; greeling within 12 miles of the site were found with a record 25,800 bq/kg. Indeed, all bottom-feeding or demersal fish “consistently showed the highest counts” of cesium, said Ken Buesseler in a Science article last year. The demersal include cod, conger eel, flounder, halibut, pollock rockfish, skate and sole. 

Bad fish aren’t limited to Japanese water. Albacore tuna caught off Washington and Oregon last Oct., and Blue fin tuna off of California were also found contaminated with Fukushima cesium. 

Tepco has said it will take 40 years to containerize all the radioactive equipment, melted fuel, high level waste and waste water at the site. This is likely an underestimate, as owners of Wisconsin’s Kewaunee reactor have said it will take 40 years to decommission that unit which is undamaged.

Government limits on cesium poisoning allowed in food vary widely. Below in becquerels-per-kilogram, as of Dec. 27, 2011: 

Drinking water Milk General foodstuffs Baby food

Japan 10 50 100 50

United States 1,200 1,200 1,200 1,200

European Union* 1,000 1,000 1,250 400

Codex (UN) 1,000 1,000 1,000 1,000

*Only applied to items produced within the EU. When Japanese agricultural products are imported to the EU, Japan’s provisional limits are applied. Source: http://www.japanprobe.com/2011/12/27/japans-new-limits-for-radiation-in-food-20-times-stricter-than-american-and-eu-standards/

Filed Under: Environment, Newsletter Archives, Nuclear Power, Quarterly Newsletter, Radiation Exposure, Radioactive Waste

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