Or course, it is impossible to imagine a nuclear power plant being built in such a way, or in such a place, or maintained in such a way, that mere flooding from excessive rain and a few dam or levy breaks, could threaten it. The nuclear plants are not built by idiots, and the regulatory agencies are very good at overseeing the whole process.

… um … ok, well, to continue…

Dr. Greg Jaczko served on US Representative Ed Markey’s staff as a science fellow, and taught Georgetown University. He served as Senatory Harry Reid’s science advisor, and in other roles for the US Senate. He became a commisioner of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) early in January 20905, andwas appointed by President Obama, in 2009, to chair that body.

His philosophy as a regulator has been transparency and public participation. He worked to improve security regulations for nuclear plants, and oversaw the initiative to make these plants airplane strike resistant. He is most well known for taking the lessons of the Fukushima nuclear disaster into account when considering further development in American nuclear energy. He took a role in stopping plans for the development of the Yucca Mountain repository. He is responsible for stopping plans for the Southern Co to build new reactors at the Vogtle plant in Georgia.

His time as commissioner and head of the NRC is not without controversy. There are complaints about his management style, and women who worked with him claim to have been treated in a more demeaning manner than their male counterparts. Jaczko’s response to these complains has been to cite a conspiracy by pro-nuclear forces against him, because of his lack of blind support for the industry. This position, that the pro-nukers have unfairly treated Jaczko, is supported by a number of third party individuals. He was asked to resign before the end of his term, but claims that this was a strategy of Senator Reid’s, to have control over who the next appointee would be.

I have no fully formed opinion on this, but I suspect that a pro-regulation regulator in Washington is essentially pre-doomed, because most of the regulatory agencies have been taken over by the industries they regulate.

Anyway, Jaczko wrote a book, and it is a rollicking, interesting, disturbing, and important read. Confessions of a Rogue Nuclear Regulator is the Jaczko story told by Jaczko.

If Jaczko is legit, if the points he is pushing are valid, then we should expect pushback from surrogates supportive of the nuclear industry in response to the book. That of course happened. I have no intention of getting into an internet fight with the greenwashers, but if you scan for reviews of Confessions of a Rogue Nuclear Regulator, you’ll find greenish pro nukers writing negative ones in widely read outlets. At the same time, the book is “liked” in the reviews by both independent thinking science reviewers and the usual anti-nuclear activists.

The book is an engaging and fast read, important, and you should judge for yourself.

This is no longer true. The last several decades has seen climate science add more climatic data because of decades of careful instrumental data collection happening, but also, earlier decades have been added to understanding the long term trends. We can now track, in detail, global surface temperatures well back into the 19th century, and we have a very good idea of change over time, and variability in, global temperatures on a century level scale for centuries. There is a slightly less finely observed record covering hundreds of thousands of years and an increasingly refined vague idea of global surface temperature for the entire history of the planet.

This is true as well with earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and tsunamis. Most of the larger versions of these events leave a mark. Sometimes that mark is an historical record that needs to be found, verified, critiqued for veracity, and eventually added to the mix. Sometimes the mark is geological, like when the coastline of the Pacific Northwest drops a few meters all at once, creating fossilized coastal wetlands that can be dated. Those events are associated with a particular kind of earthquake that happens on average every several hundred years, and now we have a multi-thousand year record of those events, allowing an estimate of major earthquake hazard in the region.

And so on.

The theory has also developed, and yes, there is a theory, or really several theories, related to disasters. For example, we distinguish between hazard (chance of a particular disaster happening at a certain level in a certain area) vs. risk (the probability of a particular bad thing happening to you as a results). If you live and work in Los Angeles, your earthquake hazard is high. You will experience earthquakes. But your risk of, say, getting killed in an earthquake is actually remarkably low considering how many there are. Why? Partly because really big ones are rare and fairly localized, and partly because you live in a house and work in a building and drive on roads that meet specifications set out to reduce risk in the case of an earthquake. Also, you “know” (supposedly) what to do if an earthquake happens. If, on the other hand, you live in an old building in San Francisco, you may still be at risk if the zoning laws have not caught up with the science. If you live near sea level in the Pacific Northwest, your earthquake hazard is really low, but if one of those giant earthquakes happens, you have bigly risk. Doomed, even.

Since my own research and academic interests have involved climate change, sea level rise, exploding volcanoes, mass death due to disease, and all that (catastrophes are the punctuation makrs of the long term archaeological and evolutionary record), I’ve always found books on disasters of interest. And now, I have a new one for you.

Man catastrophe books are written by science-interested or historically inclined writers, who are not scientists. The regurgitate the historical record of various disasters, giving you accounts of this or that volcano exploding, or this or that tsunami wiping out a coastal city, and so on. But the better books are written by scientist who are very directly, or nearly directly, engaged in the work of understanding, documenting, and addressing catastrophe.

Curbing Catastrophe: Natural Hazards and Risk Reduction in the Modern World by Timothy Dixon is one of these. Although I was aware of Dixon’s work because of his involvement in remote sensing, I don’t know him, so I’ll crib the publisher’s bio for your edification:

Timothy H. Dixon is a professor in the School of Geosciences and Director of the Natural Hazards Network at the University of South Florida in Tampa. In his research, he uses satellite geodesy and remote sensing data to study earthquakes and volcanoes, coastal subsidence and flooding, ground water extraction, and glacier motion. He has worked as a commercial pilot and scientific diver, conducted research at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, and was a professor at the University of Miami, where he co-founded the Center for Southeastern Tropical Advanced Remote Sensing (CSTARS). Dixon was a Distinguished Lecturer for the American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG) in 2006–2007. He is also a fellow of the American Geophysical Union (AGU), the Geological Society of America (GSA), and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). He received a GSA Best Paper Award in 2006 and received GSA’s Woollard Award in 2010 for excellence in Geophysics.

This book covers risk theory, the basics of natural disasters, uncertainty, and vulnerability of humans. Dixon looks specifically at Fukushima and the more general problem of untoward geological events and nuclear power plants, and other aspects of tsunamis (including the Northwest Coast problem I mention above). He talks about energy and global warming; I found his discussion of what we generally call “clean energy” a bit outdates. He makes the point, correctly, that for various reasons the increase in price of fossil fuels that would ultimately drive, through market forces, the development of non-fossil fuel sources of electricity and motion is not going to happen for a very long time on its own. Environmentalists who assume there will be huge increase in fossil fuel costs any time now are almost certainly mistaken. However, Dixon significantly understates the rate at which solar, for example, is becoming economically viable. It is now cheaper to start up a solar electricity plant than it is to start any other kind of plant, and the per unit cost of solar is very low and rapidly declining.

Dixon is a bit of a free marketeer, which I am not, but a realistic one; He makes valid and important points about science communication, time lags and long term thinking, and he makes the case that more research can produce important technological advances.

By the way, two other books in this genre — catastrophe examined by experts — that I also recommend are Yeats “Earthquake Time Bombs” and the less up to date but geologically grounded Catastrophes!: Earthquakes, Tsunamis, Tornadoes, and Other Earth-Shattering Disasters by Don Prothero.

Three years after the disaster at Fukushima, science correspondent Miles O’Brien returned to the Daiichi nuclear plant for an exclusive look at the site. Follow Miles on a never-before-seen tour of Daiichi’s sister site, Fukushima Daini, which narrowly avoided a meltdown during the Tohoku earthquake. As the country debates turning its reactors back on, Miles asks: will Japan have a nuclear future?

The new forecast track of Neoguri is shown above as well as the location of two nuclear power plants.

The forecast track has moved south, and is now in a very good (and here good means bad) position to strike the Sendai nuclear power plant very directly. Keep in mind that this forecast may change.

On Tuesday mid day UTC the storm will likely be in the later phases of a turn to the right, aiming roughly at the Sendai plant. At this point maximum wind speed near the center of the storm will likely be about 90 mph, which puts the storm in the middle of the Category One range. That evening, possibly near midnight, the center of the typhoon should be coming ashore. During this time the storm will weaken.

The exact track matters a lot. It is quit possible that the right front quadrant, near the eye, will come ashore very near the plant, which would mean a very severe storm tide. But, the strength of the storm will be attenuated so perhaps the storm tide will be reduced.

Even though the storm now seems to be more or less aiming at a shut-down nuclear power plant, I’m thinking this will all result in little more than a very wet nuclear power plant. If the storm was stronger I’d be more worried about the effects of storm surge. I think Japan will have other problems caused by this storm to worry about.

Old post:

Yes and no. The question really has to be understood to refer to a “meaningful” hit, one that matters to the plant.

<li>Yes because Super Typhoon Neoguri (which means "raccoon" in Korean) is on its way to Japan and there is no way that at least two nuclear power plants, those facing the southwest in the vicinity where the Typhoon is likely to make its first major landfall, will not be affected by this storm because the storm is huge.  It is going to hit everything. </li>


<li>No because it is possible Neoguri will not be a Category Five storm when it hits this part of Japan, it is more likely to be a Category Two storm by then.</li>


<li>Maybe, because the currently predicted path of Neoguri, as indicated on the graphic above, is highly uncertain at any level of detail at this time.  It is quite possible that the right punch (right leading quadrant) of the storm, and thus the storm tide, will come ashore in a bad place.  In this situation, the bad place would be at Sendai ... Genkai is probably more protected.  But the storm could come assure in a lot of places, we just don't know yet.</li>


<li>No, because even if there is something of a direct hit, the Japanese nuclear authorities have ashore us that the plants, which are all shut down, are secured and can easily handle this.</li>


<li>Maybe yes because if you accept what the Japanese Nuclear Power authorities say at face value you are a moron. That should be obvious by now. </li>

In the end, though, I do think that nuclear power plants are generally well built and secured and I’m sure a big storm won’t bother them too much. But, even if shut down, as they are, cooling of fuel is still required and a major storm could do the kind of damage that interferes with that. So we’ll see. The chances, though, of a nuclear disaster related to this particular storm are minimal. The storm itself is the problem.

There is some great coverage on the storm here:

<li><a href="http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/07/07/3456862/typhoon-neoguri/">‘Once In Decades’ Typhoon Approaches Japan, Two Nuclear Power Plants</a></li>

<li><a href="http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/07/supertyphoon-neoguri-japan-nuclear-plants-fukushima">A Scary Super Typhoon Is Bearing Down on Japan…and Its Nuclear Plants</a></li>

As you know if you are a regular reader of this blog, Ana Miller and I produced a number of updates no Fukushima, in which Ana’s studiously assembled list of sources was organized, assembled, and commented on. These “Fukushima Updates” together with a number of other posts on Fukushima can all be found HERE.

Yesterday I looked up how much the Fukushima disaster is likely to cost when the cleanup is all over. This is a very difficult number to estimate, but various sources put the cost at between 250 and 500 billion US dollars. For the present purposes, I’m going to assume that the actual cost will be at the higher end of the scale, and I’m going to take that money and do something else with it.

So, I’ve got 500 billion dollars and I want to spend it on non-carbon based non-nuclear energy production. What will that get me?

I’ve only done a few rough calculations, and I welcome you to correct or add or revise in the comments below. I am not an expert on this topic and I am easily confused. Please correct me in the comments but be nice about it I’m sensitive.

According to the good people at Blue Horizon Energy, which installs home solar panels and such, I can have a 625 square foot solar installation that would produce about 5000 W of power for about $20,000 dollars. Why would I want such a thing? Because I want to put it on the high school that is down the street from my house. Oh, I also want to put one on the middle school. And the strip mall where the grocery store is. I know this would be a bit more expensive, but I also want to put one or two over the parking lot at the strip mall, so cars underneath it would not get covered with snow but could hook up during the day to charge their batteries (for people with electric cars). And so on.

With the money to be spent ultimately on the Fukushima cleanup, I can install approximately 25 million of these things at current costs. I have a feeling, though, that I could get a discount. Also, if I was going to spend 500 billion buckaroos on solar, that itself would help drive down costs because costs of solar energy are dropping fast. I’m thinking I could probably squeeze 30 million units out of my budget.

There are about 100,000 public schools in the united states, a bit over that number if you count private schools. But I have 30 million units! There are about 30,000 towns and cities that probably have a city center, city hall, public works department, or some other building that a unit could go on. There are about 35,000 super markets. I’m going to make a guess and figure that if there are 30,000 supermarkets there must be at least 50,000 strip malls. There are probably several tens of thousands of parking structures, private or public. Imma guess 50,000 of those.

So far, then, we have over a quarter of a million places to put my solar panel arrays in a manner that would involve a reasonable level of management and negotiation, but we have 25 million arrays. OK, so maybe we’ll put more than one array on most of these structures. Maybe we can fit four on average, since some strip malls are large. Then we add big box stores that are not on strip malls. There’s almost 1,800 targets so there must be roughly the same number of Wall-marts. There are movie theaters and many other places with flat roofs where it would be fairly easy to install a big bunch of solar panels and still cover only part of the roof (fire departments do not like it when you cover the entire roof). And then, of course, there are farms. Lots and lots of farms with barns and other buildings on which a solar panel could be stores.

In the end, we can install 25,000,000 units that are worth 5000 Watts each. That is 125,000,000,000 W. I’m assuming that this is potential power and not realized capacity, which may be as low as 15%, but could be higher. Hell, let’s just say 20%. That’s 20 gW. Could that be right?

Putting it another way, we can install 16,250,000,000 square feet or 583 square miles of solar power.

Or maybe we should just use the money to build a smaller number of thermal solar installations like the IVANPAH project in California. There, they spent 2.2 billion dollars to develop solar power facilities that produce 392 MW (That’s a bit smaller than a single reactor of the type found at Fukushima). With 500 billion dollars, we could produce over 225 of these plants, which in turn would produce over 89,000 MW of power. That’s like building over 170 new nuclear reactors (distributed among a smaller number of plants, presumably). There are currently about 435 nuclear plants making energy around the world and in a few years that number will rise to about 500. Many of them have multiple reactors. Let’s assume for a moment that there are an average of four reactors per plant, so my 170 new reactors is equal to about 10% of the installed nuclear power base.

So, one way to look at it is this: The cost of Fukushima’s cleanup is equal to about 10% of the existing nuclear power industry’s energy production capacity. Looking it another way, we can retrofit every school district, municipality, parking garage, and farm with enough solar energy to make a big dent in their daily use of energy.

What would you do with the money?

Happy Anniversary Fukushima. Also, thank you Ana for all your work on the Fukushima feed.

Here is a video by Fairewinds about this operation, which I believe was made before TEPCO decided to not continue with the removal at this time:

As you can see, there are several possible problems. Most of these problems are not related to the reasons TEPCO has given to halt the operation at this time; they are additional .

Fukushima Update #70: If you can’t measure it, you can’t analyze it.

by Analiese Miller and Greg Laden

It has been suggested, by various commenters on the internet, that the problem with Fukushima is not that there is a dangerous radioactive mess there, but rather, that the authorities in charge have decided that exposure to radiation is dangerous, when it really isn’t. The argument has been made that the evacuation of the region around Fukushima at the time of the meltdowns and explosions was unnecessary. This presumably also means that the exclusion zones, where people are not allowed to return to the present day, are safe and should be re-occupied by the former residents. To some extent, this must also mean that in many cases the workers at the plant are not really in danger of radiation, or at least most of them most of the time. This whole business of testing for radiation leaks, and monitoring exposure, and so on and so forth, should perhaps be reserved only for those who go inside the crippled reactor buildings, not those wandering around outside in some cases hundreds of meters from those buildings. This also means that expensive and bothersome monitoring of the presence or amount of radio-nucleotides in the groundwater and entering the nearby ocean is unnecessary. Clearly, then, by extension, testing of fish and other sea life being caught for human consumption is a waste of time, and certainly, keeping these fish off the market is also a waste of time.

Indeed, one gets the impression that TEPCO feels the same way, as one of the most interesting parts of this set of news stories and commentaries is the confusion and dispute over measurements of radiation. This extends beyond mere methodology and impinges as well on politics and public relations, what with the prospect of the Tokyo Olympics on the table and all.

Or, maybe that is all wrong and radiation is really very dangerous even in tiny quantities. There are those who say that radiation falling from the sky in North America, put into clouds by Fukushima, is a danger, or that fish that live along the US or Canadian coast will pick up radiation from the ocean put there by Fukushima and become dangerous. There are even reports from some sources that the sea offshore from Fukushima has been boiling. That certainly sounds unhealthy.

We think that both of the extreme views characterized above are probably wrong. The latter version of the dangers of Fukushima arise from a combination of fear, or at least, over-caution, and ignorance. The former view, the one that says that nothing is wrong at Fukushima, is not based on ignorance at all, we think, because it comes at least in part from people who tell us that they have studied radiation and nuclear things. But clearly, it is wrong. The evacuation at Fukushima was necessary. During the first few days of the disaster, the possibility of a much much worse release of radioactive material, brought by much less unfavorable winds than actually occurred to major population areas, was very real. Exposure to dangerous levels of radiation for people living near the plant almost certainly would have happened had they not left the area, and things could have turned out much worse than they did and no one could have known that at the time. Also, the idea that certain levels of radiation are safe because people have not in the past been made demonstrably sick form radiation releases is a limited way of thinking about the dangers. Fortunately, in very few instances are people exposed in large numbers to radiation levels like those involved at Fukushima. There are not nuclear disasters like this every day, and with respect to cleanup workers, the maximum levels of exposure is, probably, set conservatively. There is nothing wrong with being conservative about something dangerous even if it means less data to play with later.

The question this leaves us with is this: If the people worried about trout in Michigan are wrong because they don’t know what they are talking about, why are the people who are talking as though radiation is nearly always harmless wrong, when they should know better?

Getting back to the question of measurements for a moment. We note that the measurement of total body exposure in children is still not being done satisfactorily years after the event. We note that when new spikes in radiation or concentrations of a particular radio-isotope are noted, it is almost always impossible to be certain that the new measurement is a new event, or merely that someone thought to measure something. On numerous occasions, including recently, an apparent spike in some measurement occurred because a measurement device that had a maximum value that was too low was replaced with a proper measuring device that could handle higher numbers. That is not science, that is not proper attention to safety, that is not even good public relations. We assume that the best and the brightest around the world assemble around a disaster like this and that the thing is being handled as well as possible. If that is so, than expertise is clearly limited in the areas of nuclear energy and nuclear safety. They can’t even measure things. We have a saying in science. If you can’t measure it you’re borked. (Or words to that effect.) They can’t measure it.

Note in the feed below that some people are considering showing up to help. Maybe we don’t have the best and the brightest at Fukushima.

Also: Solutions. There seems to be a lack of them. For instance, the groundwater bypass flume, designed to move harmless groundwater around the plant rather than through it, to avoid it being contaminated on the way to the see seems like a great idea. The problem is, the groundwater that would be shunted around the plant seems to already be contaminated byu tritium. Is it contaminated by anything else? Who knows? They don’t know how to measure things!

UPDATE Since this is very current, it seems appropriate to toss it in this update rather than wait for later. Tropical Storm Man-Yi, which is just under typhoon (hurricane) strength with maximum winds at hurricane strength, is hitting Japan right now and it is predicted to affect the area around Fukushima. The storm will have gone over land for a period of time before arriving at Fukushima and may not be that strong. Having said that, Pacific Typhoons (or near typhoons) are not like the ones in the Atlantic, which many readers of this blog are more familiar with. They are often way, way larger and for a given rating are often more serious than equivalent Atlantic storm.

The storm will be going over Fukushima over the next several hours, and there is actually a live feed you can watch to see the action, here.

Fukushima Leaks Prompt Government to ‘Emergency Measures’ –Bloomberg; Aug. 26, 2013

Japan’s government will lead “emergency measures” to tackle radioactive water spills at the wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant, wresting control of the disaster recovery from the plant’s heavily criticized operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company.

“We’ve allowed Tokyo Electric to deal with the contaminated water situation on its own and they’ve essentially turned it into a game of ‘Whack-a-Mole,’” Trade Minister Toshimitsu Motegi told reporters today at Fukushima. “From now on, the government will move to the forefront.”

link

Outside help offered to deal with Tepco debacle: U.S., French experts also ready; water woes escalate –Japan Times; Aug. 26, 2013

Russia repeated an offer first made two years ago to help Japan clean up its radiation-ravaged Fukushima No. 1 nuclear station, welcoming Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s decision to seek outside help.

“In our globalized nuclear industry, we don’t have national accidents, they are all international,” Asmolov said. Since the Liberal Democratic Party took power in December and Shinzo Abe became the prime minister, talks on bilateral cooperation on the Fukushima cleanup have turned “positive” and Russia is ready to offer its assistance, he said from Moscow last week.

The idea of pumping water for cooling was never going to be anything but a “machine for generating radioactive water,” Asmolov said. Other more complex methods, such as the use of special absorbents like thermoxide to clean contaminated water and the introduction of air cooling, should be used, he said.

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‘Mismanaged’ leaks to require reserve funds –Japan Times; Aug. 26, 2013

The government is considering using reserves from the fiscal 2013 budget to deal with the leaks of radioactive water at Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s Fukushima No. 1 power plant, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said Monday.
Suga said he has instructed industry minister Toshimitsu Motegi to pursue all possible measures to deal with the leaks, including the money.

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More Fukushima evacuees to sue Tepco, government –Japan Times; Aug. 26, 2013

A group of 74 people representing 27 families will file the lawsuit with the Osaka District Court on Sept. 17, seeking around ¥15 million per head for psychological and other damage suffered from the event in Fukushima Prefecture, the lawyers said.
Similar suits have been filed in Hokkaido, Tokyo, and Yamagata, Chiba, Niigata and Aichi prefectures.

The group will argue that Tepco should have taken stronger measures to protect the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant from earthquakes and tsunami after the government’s Headquarters for Earthquake Research Promotion warned in 2002 that there was 20 percent chance of a magnitude 8 or so quake occurring in the Japan Trench in the Pacific Ocean within 30 years, the lawyers said.

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RO Waste Water Leak at #Fukushima I Nuke Plant: TEPCO Says the Leak May Have Started A Month Ago after Examining Beta-Radiation Exposure of a Worker –EXSKF blog; Aug. 27, 2013

At Nuclear Regulatory Authority’s site, there is a TEPCO document that contains charts that plot beta radiation exposure of workers who do the tank patrol, and of the worker who worked at the radio relay station (English labels are by me):

The area where the relay station is located has been found with high beta radiation, up to 95.55 millisieverts/hour at 70-micrometer equivalent dose (to express the effect on skin and the crystalline lens (of the eye)).

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Gov’t decides to put off target date for decontaminating area near Fukushima plant – Mainichi; Aug. 28, 2013

The government has decided to push back the target date for completing its decontamination work in seven of the 11 municipalities around the crippled Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant from the end of fiscal 2013 to sometime after fiscal 2014.

Areas in the 11 municipalities near the crippled nuclear plant that were first designated as “evacuation zones” or “planned evacuation zones” in the wake of the outbreak of the nuclear crisis are subject to the decontamination work under the jurisdiction of the central government. The government has decided to push back the target date for the decontamination work in seven municipalities – Iitate, Katsurao, Kawamata, Minamisoma, Namie, Tomioka, and Futaba.

The government is supposed to ask Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO), the operator of the crippled nuclear power station, to pay the bills for decontamination. But as of the end of May, TEPCO had paid only 6.7 billion yen out of 21.2 billion yen the central government told the utility to pay. TEPCO has apparently been making decisions whether to pay the costs while strictly examining the effectiveness of the decontamination work. Therefore, the government apparently is hesitant to put pressure on TEPCO over decontamination projects that are not clearly deemed effective in reducing radiation levels. If TEPCO’s business conditions worsen, there is a possibility of the government shouldering the costs.

link

Water Management and Mismanagement at Fukushima –All Things Nuclear Blog; Aug. 29, 2013

Although the uncontrolled daily release of radioactivity into the environment represents a failure on the part of TEPCO to safely manage the Fukushima site, it does not yet pose a major public health threat comparable to the releases of radioactivity that occurred in the weeks following the accident, which were millions of times greater. The inability to safely contain the radioactivity at the site is first and foremost a threat to the workers who must report each day no matter how precarious the conditions. The contamination of more than ten workers in recent weeks, resulting in an expansion of areas where respiratory protection is required, has highlighted the dangers faced by personnel.

However, the situation is a stark reminder of how fragile things still are at Fukushima, which is especially alarming given the enormous quantity of radioactive material that still remains within the reactor cores and spent fuel pools. Things could rapidly get worse if, for example, additional wastewater tanks started to leak. And the potential for another earthquake that might cause soil liquefaction under the site, as reported by the Japan Times this week, raises the possibility of sudden and much larger releases. The international community should not be lured into a false sense of confidence during the periods when little news about Fukushima is being reported. The situation is dire and requires an urgent response.

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Fishermen press TEPCO to end toxic water problem at Fukushima –Mainichi; Aug. 29, 2013

“Your company’s radioactive water management has failed,” the National Federation of Fisheries Co-operative Associations told TEPCO President Naomi Hirose after it summoned him to its office in Tokyo.

On Wednesday, the Fukushima Prefectural Federation of Fisheries Co-operative Associations decided to suspend at the end of August so-called “trial” fisheries operations off the coast of Fukushima.

A trial operation limits the area of fishing and only allows shipment of products confirmed to be safe.

A fisheries cooperative covering the northern part of the prefecture has employed such an operation for more than a year, while another cooperative covering the southern part of the prefecture had planned to resume the operation from September.

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Fukushima Fishermen Ruined by Tepco Now Key in Toxic Fight –Bloomberg; Aug. 30, 2013

Tokyo Electric Power Co. ruined the livelihoods of the commercial fishermen who trawled the seas off Fukushima prefecture when its leaking reactors poisoned the fishing grounds. The utility now needs their help.

Tokyo Electric has built wells and a pipeline on the hills behind the wrecked Fukushima atomic station to route groundwater into the ocean away from the plant. This will reduce the volume of water getting into reactor buildings, where it’s contaminated and then flows into the Pacific at a rate of 300 metric tons a day.

While the company has assured Fukushima fishing cooperatives the water to be piped from the hillside wouldn’t be contaminated, the fishermen have yet to sign off on the plan, citing the utility’s history of faked safety reports and cover ups. Talks with the 1,500 fishermen are now into their third month.

“We have yet to reach a conclusion” on whether the cooperative will agree to Tokyo Electric’s water bypass plan, Tetsu Nozaki, chairman of the Fukushima Prefectural Federation of Fisheries Co-operative Associations, said yesterday in Tokyo. “We will make a cool-headed decision.”

“The only thing we can do now is to explain this carefully,” Tepco President Naomi Hirose said in a briefing this week. “We are getting more understanding that the risk gets higher unless we solve the underground water issue.”

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Fukushima radiation levels 18 times higher than previously thought –Guardian; Sept. 1, 2013

The high radiation levels announced on Sunday highlighted the dangers facing thousands of workers as they attempt to contain, treat and store water safely, while preventing fuel assemblies damaged in the accident from going back into meltdown.

Japan’s nuclear workers are allowed an annual accumulative radiation exposure of 50 millisieverts. Tepco said radiation of 230 millisieverts an hour had been measured at another tank, up from 70 millisieverts last month. A third storage tank was emitting 70 millisieverts an hour, Tepco said. Radiation near a pipe connecting two other tanks had been measured at 230 millisieverts.

Tepco admitted recently that only two workers had initially been assigned to check more than 1,000 storage tanks on the site. Neither of the workers carried dosimeters to measure their exposure to radiation, and some inspections had not been properly recorded.

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Fukushima’s Radioactive Legacy is Just Beginning –Climate Central; Sept. 1, 2013

If anything, the future consequences of Fukushima for Japan are more serious than for the countries still suffering from the aftermath of the Chernobyl accident in Ukraine in 1986.

There the 30 km (18.6 mile) exclusion zone round the plant is still in force, and the ruined reactor has still not been made safe. The current international effort is aimed at placing a giant concrete shield over the reactor at a cost of around $1.5 billion. That work is not expected to be complete for another two years — until 30 years after the disaster.

The International Atomic Energy Agency team that looked at Fukushima and the problems of making the plant safe said in April that Japan may need longer than the projected 40 years to decommission the wrecked plants.

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Fukushima nuclear plant still ‘unstable’, regulator says -BBC News; Sept. 2, 2013

The crisis at Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plant “has not ended”, the country’s nuclear watchdog has warned, saying the situation there is “unstable”.
Watchdog chief Shunichi Tanaka also accused the plan’s operator of careless management during the crisis.

He added that it may not be possible to avoid dumping some contaminated water into the ocean.

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Errors Cast Doubt on Japan’s Cleanup of Nuclear Accident Site –New York Times; Sept. 3, 2013

In this small farming town in the evacuation zone surrounding the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, small armies of workers in surgical masks and rubber gloves are busily scraping off radioactive topsoil in a desperate attempt to fulfill the central government’s vow one day to allow most of Japan’s 83,000 evacuees to return. Yet, every time it rains, more radioactive contamination cascades down the forested hillsides along the rugged coast.

As the environmental damage around the plant and in the ocean nearby continues to accumulate more than two years after the disaster, analysts are beginning to question whether the government and the plant’s operator, known as Tepco, have the expertise and ability to manage such a complex crisis.

In the past, they say, Tepco has resorted to technological quick fixes that have failed to control the crisis, further damaged Japan’s flagging credibility and only deflected hard decisions into the future. Some critics said the government’s new proposals offer just more of the same.

“Japan is clearly living in denial,” said Kiyoshi Kurokawa, a medical doctor who led Parliament’s independent investigation last year into the causes of the nuclear accident. “Water keeps building up inside the plant, and debris keeps piling up outside of it. This is all just one big shell game aimed at pushing off the problems until the future.”
“This is just a tactic to avoid taking responsibility,” said Harutoshi Funabashi, a sociologist at Hosei University who led a critical examination of the recovery efforts by the Science Council of Japan, a group of about 2,000 academics. “Admitting that no one can live near the plant for a generation would open the way for all sorts of probing questions and doubts.”

Mr. Funabashi and other critics say Japan should consider other options, including the tactic adopted by the former Soviet Union at Chernobyl of essentially capping the shattered reactors in concrete and declaring the most contaminated towns off limits for a generation.

Japanese officials said the large amounts of groundwater under the plant mean that just covering the reactors with concrete would fail to contain the spread of radiation. They also said giving up on a large portion of Fukushima was not an option in a densely populated country where land remains a scarce commodity.

But they also suggested that the reason for eschewing a Soviet-style option may be the fear that failure could turn a wary public even more decisively against Japan’s nuclear industry.

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Abe steps in to tackle nuclear water crisis –Japan Times; Sept. 3, 2013

After putting off spending taxpayer money as long as it could, the Abe administration announced Tuesday it will earmark at least ¥47 billion to stop contaminated water from leaking at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant.

The government will finish setting up coolant equipment to create a barrier of frozen soil around the plant by the end of March 2015, not by the end of September 2015 as envisioned in an earlier plan, officials said.

Of the earmarked funds, ¥32 billion will be used to create the facilities to freeze the soil, and another ¥15 billion to develop more powerful filtering equipment to remove radioactive materials from the contaminated water.

The Abe Cabinet finally decided to step in after it recently become clear that hundreds of tons of contaminated groundwater has been flowing into the sea, drawing strong attention and criticism both at home and abroad.

Still, at least for the time being, Tepco will have to handle the water problem on its own, as the government will spend money only for projects that involve “great technological challenges.”

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Criminal complaint filed against TEPCO, 32 executives –Mainichi; Sept. 3, 2013

Three people on Tuesday filed a criminal complaint against Tokyo Electric Power Co. and 32 of its current and former executives with the Fukushima prefectural police, arguing they neglected to take measures to prevent toxic water at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant from flowing into the ocean.

Among the three is Ruiko Muto, who heads a group of some 14,000 people who have filed a criminal complaint with prosecutors against the utility, its executives and government officials over their responsibility for causing the Fukushima nuclear disaster.

In the latest complaint, the three said the failure of Tokyo Electric and its executives, including current president Naomi Hirose, to take appropriate measures has caused the daily outflow of 300–400 tons of radioactive-contaminated water into the Pacific.

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The Road Ahead: Infant Checks in Fukushima –NHK Newsline Feature; Sept. 4, 2013 (VIDEO)

Hospital officials say they lack the resources to conduct accurate radiation checks of infants in the wake of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant disaster. Now scientists and industrial designers are developing a machine that could offer much greater precision.

click here for video

Record radiation readings near Fukushima contaminated water tanks –Reuters; Sept. 4, 2013

Readings just above the ground near a set of tanks at the plant showed radiation as high as 2,200 millisieverts (mSv), the Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) said on Wednesday. The previous high in areas holding the tanks was the 1,800 mSv recorded on Saturday.

“There’s a strong possibility these tanks also leaked, or had leaked previously,” said Hiroaki Koide, Assistant Professor at Kyoto University Research Reactor Institute. “We have to worry about the impact on nearby groundwater…These tanks are not sturdy and have been a problem since they were constructed two years ago.”

It’s also possible the radiation readings are increasing because of more frequent monitoring and inspections by Tepco employees, indicating the hotspots and leaks have been there for some time, Koide said.

“The government has finally said they will be involved in this problem but they are still not going to be fully involved in the decommission,” he said. “It is too little, too late.”

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Fukushima fishermen losing hope as trial operations postponed –Asahi Shimbun; Sept. 4, 2013

Of about 200 kilograms of octopus caught in Fukushima waters and stocked in early August, half have been left unsold.

According to the Soma-Futaba fishing cooperative association, octopus caught during the trial fishing period had been shipped to Tokyo and Nagoya. But wholesalers in Nagoya stopped accepting the octopus in late July, a week after TEPCO announced a leak of radioactive water.

Hiroyuki Sato, who heads the association, has also felt frustrated.
“Products we monitored and found to be safe have been given the cold shoulder (by our customers),” Sato, 57, said. “We have done many things until now, but we are right back where we started.”

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Fukushima tank leak may have mixed with groundwater, Tepco reckons –Japan Times; Sept. 5, 2013

Tepco said Thursday that workers had detected radiation of 650 becquerels per liter in samples from a monitoring well dug near the damaged tank.

“There is the possibility that the contaminated water (from the tank), diluted by rainwater … has seeped into soil and reached groundwater,” Tepco said in a press release.
The groundwater from the surrounding mountains naturally flows beneath the plant toward the sea.

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Camera at reactor 1 finds water entry point –Japan Times; Sept. 5, 2013

An entry point for some of the groundwater flooding the crippled Fukushima No. 1 plant has been found at reactor 1, according to Tokyo Electric Power Co.

Tepco will consider measures to halt or divert the water by conducting more surveys to determine exactly where it is entering. Cracks in the basement are considered a possibility.

The groundwater is believed to be the primary source of the radioactive material entering the sea and potentially poses great danger to the environment.

Reactors 1, 2, 3 and 4 and their turbine buildings have similar layouts. Stopping the invasion of the groundwater is thus considered vital to reducing the overall volume of contaminated water.

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RO Waste Water Leak at #Fukushima: 2,200 mSv/Hr to 30 mSv/Hr Beta After Shielding Experiment –EXSKF blog; Sept. 5, 2013

The images don’t give you much confidence and may make you fear for the safety of workers from beta radiation exposure on skin who would be asked to perform this task on potentially over 350 huge tanks.

But the beta radiation (measured at 5 centimeter and expressed in 70 micrometer dose equivalent) did go down.

1. Apply sealing material (which looks like putty) to the flange.

1. Place one to three acrylic sheets (15 x 10 x 1 centimeter).

1. Place two layers of rubber sheets (1.5m x 1m x 3mm) on the concrete (and put sand bags to hold them down).

Result:

• 2,200 mSv/hr –> 30 mSv/hr
• 500 mSv/hr –> 15 mSv/hr
• 70 mSv/hr –> 10 mSv/hr

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Regulator raps Fukushima operator over “unreliable” data –Reuters; Sept. 5, 2013

Tokyo Electric Power Co (Tepco) , the operator of the stricken Fukushima nuclear plant, is still putting out questionable data on radiation leaks, causing confusion and a heightened sense of crisis, Japan’s nuclear regulator said.

The stakes have been raised as Japan makes a final pitch for Tokyo to host the 2020 Olympic Games, while a steady stream of bad news from Fukushima, the site of the worst atomic disaster in a quarter of a century, leaves officials frustrated by Tepco’s missteps and miscalculations.

“As I’ve said before, Tokyo Electric has not been properly disclosing the situation about the contamination and the levels of contamination,” Shunichi Tanaka, chairman of the Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA), told reporters on Thursday.

“This has caused confusion domestically and internationally. Because of that, the Japanese government has a sense of crisis and I, personally, feel a little angry about it,” he said.

The company’s disclosure of problems at the site and the quality of its data have been a source of constant criticism.

“I have a certain expert knowledge of Tepco’s data and their data is not reliable,” Kayoko Nakamura, one of five NRA commissioners, said at Thursday’s briefing.

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Leaked toxic water at Fukushima plant may have mixed with groundwater –Mainichi; Sept. 6, 2013

Tokyo Electric Power Co. said Thursday it has detected 650 becquerels per liter of radioactive substances from groundwater near a leaky water storage tank at its crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

The detection of radioactive substances emitting strontium and other beta rays shows the possibility that toxic water from the tank may have reached the groundwater, the plant operator known as TEPCO said. About 300 tons of highly toxic water had leaked from the tank.

The utility said it collected the groundwater Wednesday at a well dug more than a dozen meters south of the tank in the H4 area where the radioactive water had leaked.

The government plans to use wells to pump up groundwater before it flows into reactor buildings for discharge into the sea in a bid to reduce about 400 tons of groundwater now seeping into reactor buildings every day. The construction of an ice wall is also planned to block off groundwater flow.

With the latest detection of radioactive substances, however, the water in some of the wells is feared to be contaminated.

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Seoul bans fish imports from eight prefectures –Japan Times; Sept. 6, 2013

According to officials, all fishery products from radiation-affected regions in Japan will be banned from entering South Korea regardless of the levels of contamination. The ban covers products from Fukushima, Aomori, Ibaraki, Gunma, Miyagi, Iwate, Tochigi and Chiba prefectures.

“The measure comes as our people’s concerns are growing over the fact that hundreds of tons of radiation contaminated water are leaked daily from the site of Japan’s nuclear accident in Fukushima,” the South Korean Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries said in a press release, according to Yonhap news agency.

Tokyo responded Friday by saying Japan has stringent food safety standards based on international rules and regularly checks radiation levels. Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga urged Seoul to “take actions based on scientific grounds,” stressing Japan is “strictly controlling safety” of fishery products based on international radiation standards.

The South Korean government said it will request additional radiation tests from Japan, if “even a minuscule dose of radioactive material, such as cesium or iodine, is detected in any products from any other region of Japan,” Yonhap reported.
The government also decided to lower the allowed dose of radiation in fisheries products from the current 370 becquerels per kilogram to 100 Bq/kg.

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South Korea bans fish imports from Japan’s Fukushima region –Guardian; Sept. 6, 2013

With the IOC decision imminent, Shunichi Tanaka, chairman of Japan’s nuclear regulation authority, criticised Tepco for inflating fears around the world by releasing misleading data about the water leaks.

Earlier this week, the utility said it had detected measured radiation of 2,200 millisieverts an hour at a hotspot near a water tank. Tanaka said the measurement was misleading, and had prompted alarmist reports in the domestic and international media.

“What Tepco is talking about is the level of contamination,” he said, “So to describe it with the unit ‘millisieverts per hour’ is scientifically unacceptable. It’s like describing how much something weighs by using centimetres.”

He said Tepco should have used the unit becquerel, which signifies the radioactivity levels in the water itself rather than the potential human exposure levels. “I have come to think they need to be spoon fed,” Tanaka said of Tepco. “It is regrettable that Tepco has caused confusion and fear in the international community by spreading misleading information.”

The 2,200-millisievert an hour reading, confirmed by Tepco, is accurate, however. The firm has been at pains to point out that most of the radiation was emitted as beta rays – as opposed to far more dangerous gamma rays – which travel only short distances and are easily blocked by protective clothing.

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Tepco to fit No. 1 plant water tanks with level gauges –Japan Times; Sept. 7, 2013

Tokyo Electric Power Co. said it will install water level gauges on all flange-type tanks storing radioactive coolant at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant by the end of November, to enhance monitoring.

The new gauges can remotely monitor the levels of water in the tanks nonstop and sound an alarm if a decrease is detected, Tepco said.

Currently, only 55 flange-type tanks out of 337 are equipped with gauges. The existing devices differ from the ones that will be installed and cannot be remotely monitored.

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RO Waste Water Leak at #Fukushima: TEPCO’s Video of Tank Patrol by Workers –EXSKF blog; Sept. 8, 2013

Three workers are doing the patrol of the tank area to spot the leaks. These are the assembled tanks as opposed to welded, held together by rivets and packing (whose effective life is about 5 hours, and that doesn’t assume radiation).

Workers are to examine the tanks and any water puddles closely, and measure the radiation. The area looks huge, and there is no way to distinguish the actual leak from the rainwater puddle until and unless they actually measure the radiation.

By the way, there is a job listing posted on September 3, 2013 at the government job agency “Hellowork” in Fukushima Prefecture to recruit workers to do the tank patrol at Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant. The listing was posted by one of the subcontractors (of the subcontractors, most likely).

• Wages: 10,000 to 14,000 yen [100 to 140 dollars] per day
• Benefits: none
• Details of work: to monitor tanks that store contaminated water at Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant. You will patrol the compound with survey meter with another worker, and visually inspect the tanks and write reports. One round takes about 30 to 40 minutes, and you are expected to do 4 to 6 rounds of patrol per one shift. The work will be intermittent, and the effective hours of work per day will be about three hours. When you are not doing the patrol, you will wait in the room that is shielded from radiation inside the plant. Trial workers are also wanted.
• Required education: none
• Required work experience, license, certificate: none

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Fukushima leaks contaminate more groundwater –NHK; Sept. 9, 2013

TEPCO says it detected 3,200 becquerels of strontium and other radioactive substances per liter of water collected on Sunday from a new well. The well is about 20 meters north of the tank that leaked.

The reading was 5 times higher than in a sample taken from another well, to the south of the tank, last Wednesday.

TEPCO is planning to dig more wells to try to find out how the underground water is being contaminated.

In another development, TEPCO officials said they detected 80,000 becquerels of tritium per liter in a sample collected last Thursday from a well on the coastal side of the No.1 reactor building. The well has been there from before the nuclear accident.

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72% criticize government’s response to Fukushima radioactive water leak issue –Asahi Shimbun; Sept. 9, 2013

For the survey, The Asahi Shimbun contacted 3,496 voters by telephone on Sept. 7–8. There were 1,925 valid responses, accounting for 55 percent of the total.
The respondents were also asked whether they feel the government should take the lead in tackling this growing problem, and 89 percent answered “yes.”

When asked to pick one option among four in regard to the gravity of the problem, 95 percent of respondents answered it is “serious.” Of that number, 72 percent said “very much” and 23 percent said “to some degree.”

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Stress-induced deaths in Fukushima top those from 2011 natural disasters –Mainichi; Sept. 9, 2013

The number of deaths in Fukushima Prefecture caused mainly by stress from the nuclear disaster reached 1,539 at the end of August, almost equaling the 1,599 fatalities due directly to the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami, the Mainichi Shimbun has learned.

In addition, bereaved families have filed condolence money applications for at least 109 victims who they say died due to fatigue, stress and aggravated health conditions while living in evacuation shelters and temporary housing. If this number is added, deaths attributable to post-disaster conditions surpass the number of those killed directly by the March 11, 2011 quake and tsunami.

There have been cases of Fukushima residents whose health conditions worsened due to extended periods living as evacuees, as well as those who were driven to suicide.

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Fukushima evacuation has killed more than earthquake and tsunami, survey says –NBC NEWS; Sept. 9, 2013

Francis Markus, East Asia spokesperson for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), said the conditions faced by those displaced is made worse by them not knowing when they can return.

“What we are seeing is some very, very difficult social and emotional effects that communities are having to cope with,” he said Tuesday. “A lot of the people suffering are the older generation, and they need a lot of support to make it through with as little ill effect as possible. It’s a very serious and painful existence.”
Markus has visited many of the evacuees as part of the IFRC relief efforts in the region.

“You drive into the settlements and find they are very neat and tidy,” he said.

“There is a car park, and then there is rows upon rows of these very neat but very small prefabricated houses, each with a family trying to make them as homely as possible. In the summer they are very hot and in the winter they are very chilly.

“People from the worst affected areas are really very concerned as to when they will be able to go back, if they will be able to go back at all.”

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Japan: No Indictments Over Fukushima Accident –New York Times; Sept. 9, 2013

Japanese prosecutors have decided not to indict former officials of Tokyo Electric Power, the operator of the tsunami-stricken nuclear power plant at Fukushima, over their roles in the accident there in March 2011, Japan’s public broadcaster reported Monday. Naoto Kan, who was prime minister at the time of the accident, will also not be prosecuted over his inability to prevent the multiple meltdowns and explosions that hit the plant’s reactors, driving 100,000 people from their homes, according to the broadcaster, NHK. Prosecutors said that their decision was based on data provided on a voluntary basis, and on the opinions of experts, who suggested that the scale of the earthquake and tsunami that triggered the accident could not have been predicted. That finding, however, has been contradicted in various studies, including an influential parliamentary report that called the accident a “manmade disaster.”

A group of Fukushima residents who had sought indictments told NHK that prosecutors “had failed to respond to the voice of local residents."

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Evacuees give mixed reactions –NHK, Sept. 9, 2013

A man in his 70s says prosecutors have never done on-site inspections and do not understand how evacuees are feeling. He says he cannot understand why no one is indicted for such a serious accident, and that prosecutors should determine who is to blame.

Another man, also in his 70s, urges prosecutors to not only investigate people who dealt with the accident but also politicians who approved the construction of the Fukushima Daiichi plant.

A woman in her 60s says many people are still living in temporary housing 2 and half years after the accident.

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Ex-officials, local chiefs react to decision –NHK; Sept. 9, 2013

Former Nuclear Safety Commission chairman Haruki Madarame is one of the accused people. He declined to comment on the prosecutors’ decision not to press charges.

Tokyo Electric Power Company apologized for causing much trouble to residents of Fukushima and other people, but declined to comment on the decision.

Toshitsuna Watanabe, the mayor of Okuma Town in Fukushima Prefecture, says he will keep on monitoring developments.

The mayor says he and other town officials believe that delayed responses in the initial phase of the accident caused damage to spread.

Shiro Izawa, the mayor of Futaba Town, which hosts the Fukushima Daiichi plant, also declined to comment.

All residents of Okuma and Futaba have been evacuated due to high radiation levels.

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Leak from Fukushima tank contaminating groundwater –Asahi Shimbun; Sept. 10, 2013

Tokyo Electric Power Co. has discovered radioactive materials from groundwater at the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant. It is the second such instance, which suggests contaminated water that leaked from a storage tank is spreading underground.

The utility said Sept. 9 that 3,200 becquerels of radioactive materials, such as strontium, were detected per liter of water taken from an observation well the previous day.

The well is located 20 meters north of the storage tank from which the company said on Aug. 20 that an estimated 300 tons of highly radioactive water leaked.

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Fukushima victims incensed at decision not to prosecute TEPCO, government officials –Japan Daily Press; Sept. 10, 2013

One of the affected residents who took up the cause for the officials to be held responsible was Kazuya Tarukawa, 38, a farmer in Sukagawa, Fukushima Prefecture. He said, “It is very heartbreaking if the decision not to indict leads to the erasing of the calls made by disaster victims to pursue responsibility for the accident.” Reiko Hachisuka, 61, a Fukushima resident who now lives in temporary housing in Aizu-Wakamatsu, Fukushima Prefecture, expressed her disgust at the decision. “I want to shout, ‘Why is no one being held responsible?’” Hachisuka says that she only feels frustration at the fact that no one seems to want to take responsibility for the disaster. “Even if responsible individuals were pursued, the nature of the utility TEPCO would not change,” she said. “I am very saddened because no one has stepped forward and said, ‘I am the person responsible.’”

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Fukushima refugees disappointed that ex-PM, TEPCO execs escape prosecution –Mainichi; Sept. 10, 2013

“We wanted to seize it as an opportunity to change the status quo. It is truly regrettable,” said Toru Takeda, 72, who is still taking shelter in Yonezawa, Yamagata Prefecture, after evacuating from Fukushima city.

“The responsibility for an accident of that magnitude should not be kept ambiguous. I wonder how they think the world sees them,” Takeda said while drooping his shoulders in disappointment.

Hiroyuki Inamoto, 52, who still is taking shelter in Tokyo’s Koto Ward after evacuating from Tomioka, Fukushima Prefecture, said, “Non-prosecution. That’s something like ‘I thought so.’ Even if we hold them accountable for what happened in the past, our lives will not change. I want the government to think about what should be done for us in the future, such as places for us to live and reconstruction of our hometowns.”

Kan, who was prime minister when the nuclear accident broke out, said in a statement, “I spearheaded the work to prevent the accident from expanding and to mitigate damage. I see non-prosecution as a natural outcome.”

[link](http://mainichi.jp/english/english/newsselect/news/20130910p2a00m0na027000c.html
Decontamination delay affects evacuees –NHK; Sept. 10, 2013)

The Environment Ministry on Tuesday admitted that it cannot finish the project in 7 cities and towns by its initial deadline set for the end of next March.

The ministry attributes the delay to difficulty in obtaining agreements from evacuees living in different locations, and securing sites to store radioactive soil.

In Iitate Village, only 3 percent of the houses have been decontaminated despite the ministry’s initial plan to finish the work for the village by next March.

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Resisting with a Purpose –NHK Newsline Feature; Sept. 10, 2013 (VIDEO)

Two and a half years on from the nuclear accident in Fukushima, one local farmer is refusing to abandon his cattle despite a government evacuation order. And the cows are providing a unique opportunity to study the effects of radiation.

VIDEO HERE

Abe’s assurance over Fukushima radioactive water comes under question –Mainichi; Sept. 10, 2013

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s assurance that the situation surrounding the radioactively contaminated water at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant is “under control” during Tokyo’s final presentation for the 2020 Olympics have come under question, prompting plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) to send an inquiry to the government.

Abe stated in his presentation at the International Olympic Committee meeting in Buenos Aires on Sept. 7, “Some may have concerns about Fukushima. Let me assure you, the situation is under control. It has never done and will never do any damage to Tokyo.” He also said the effect of the water leak has been “completely blocked” within an area of 0.3 square kilometers in the waters from the plant.

“His remarks don’t convey the facts accurately,” said one observer in criticism of the prime minister’s statement.

“It is hard to tell what can be called as being ‘under control,’ but it is certain that you can’t say the contaminated water has ‘been completely blocked’ in a technical sense,” said a senior official with the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry.

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Abe’s assurance to IOC on nuclear plant called into question –Japan Times; Sept. 10, 2013

Experts have long pointed out that irradiated water from the plant has kept gushing into the Pacific far beyond the man-made bay, although the government continues to claim that most radioactive materials have been contained within a silt fence that forms a barrier directly in front of reactor units 1 through 4. Reactors 1, 2 and 3 suffered core meltdowns in March 2011.

The silt fence was deliberately set up with many openings so it can withstand waves and tidal movements.

When disclosing the results of a simulation last month, Tokyo Electric Power Co. admitted that a lot of water — and probably radioactive materials — was penetrating the fence and pouring into the wider ocean. The simulation assumed that 50 percent of the water inside the fence becomes mixed with seawater daily due to tides and other factors.

Tepco, based on the findings, concluded that a maximum of 10 trillion becquerels of radioactive strontium–90 and a further 20 trillion becquerels of cesium–137 may have reached the ocean.

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Tritium levels spike at stricken Fukushima nuclear plant –Reuters; Sept. 11, 2013

The operator of the wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant said levels of tritium – considered one of the least harmful radioactive elements – spiked more than 15 times in groundwater near a leaked tank at the facility over three days this week.

Tokyo Electric Power Co (Tepco) said tritium levels in water taken from a well close to a number of storage tanks holding irradiated water rose to 64,000 becquerels per liter on Tuesday from 4,200 becquerels/liter at the same location on Sunday.

The spike in radioactive elements in groundwater near the tanks threatens to scuttle Tepco’s plans to build a bypass to route groundwater away from the plant and release it into the Pacific Ocean. The tank that leaked is in an area around 130 meters above the proposed bypass.

Tepco Vice President Zengo Aizawa stressed the importance of the bypass on Wednesday, saying the company will continue to try and win support from local fishermen – who oppose the release of contaminated water into the sea- for the bypass.
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Japan ponders Fukushima options, but Tepco too big to fail –Reuters; Sept. 11, 2013

A crisis over radiation-contaminated water at the plant has revived calls to put Tokyo Electric Power Co (Tepco) into bankruptcy as a prelude to nationalising the clean-up and shut-down of the reactors, but there is little political support for the idea given its potential fallout for financial markets, Tepco’s creditors and other nuclear utilities.

With concerns over Tepco’s ability to cope, policymakers are pondering ways to take the Fukushima shut-down off the utility’s hands, perhaps through an agency along the lines of Britain’s Nuclear Decommissioning Authority. Even that, though, faces hurdles, including the likely need for new legislation, clarity on the size of the bill for taxpayers and government liability, and working out the implications for Japan’s other utilities.

That means, at least for now, the government may just end up pouring in more money, leaving Tepco in charge while stepping up official oversight.

Under the scheme crafted to keep Tepco afloat after the 2011 disaster, the company is liable for compensation, decontamination of affected areas and decommissioning the reactors. It is supposed to use electricity revenues to pay for decommissioning, while, for compensation and decontamination, it can borrow up to 5 trillion yen from the state-backed Nuclear Damage Liability Facilitation Corporation.

With cost estimates for compensation and decontamination at least double the 5 trillion yen credit line, and projections of the cost of decommissioning starting at 1 trillion yen, critics have long said Japanese citizens would end up paying the bill.

But putting Tepco into bankruptcy would make that inconvenient truth all too clear.

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The rest of our posts about Fukushima are HERE.

The overall expected health risks of the Fukushima disaster overall and continued health risks because of the ongoing leakage are hard to estimate. There is almost certainly an elevated cancer risk for people living in the area, though the extent of this is unknown. Concerns that we see around the Internet that dangerous levels of radiation are reaching the US are incorrect.

Having said that, I think people often evaluate the significance of the Fukushima disaster incorrectly, for political reasons. Those who want to claim that nuclear power (including existing old-generation nuclear plants) is just honkey-dory seem to do so by feeding off of anti-nuke misconceptions and irrational fears about radiation. Yes, people do get it wrong; the average person has no clue what risks radioactive materials or radiation pose. For this reason, it is easy to creates straw men and then disprove them. The fact that the region around Fukushima is not littered with skeletons of people who were zapped into oblivion by the Fukushima multiple meltdowns, or that all babies in Japan are born with only one head and ten fingers, does not mean that nothing happened there. The fact is that you can’t go near this power plant without taking a serious health risk, and there is a moderate but real health risk because of the prior large scale dispersal of radioactive material and the ongoing lower level but still important outpouring (literally) of radioisotopes.

If we were to propose the construction of 22 nuclear power plants and noted that over a 30 year period one of them would suffer multiple meltdowns, spew enormous amounts of nuclear icky stuff into the air and sea, continued to spread contaminated water into the sea and groundwater for years after at a lower rate, create a very expensive problem that would last for decades and create a deadly no-entry zone filled with millions and millions of gallons of radioactive water and piles of nuclear material in the disabled reactors and spent fuel pools that could not be cleaned up for decades in a zone susceptible to serious earthquakes and tsunamis … the designers of that system might well be asked to go back to the drawing board or seek other alternatives. (Japan has about 22 plants operated over about 30 years, give or take.)

In fact, they were. They were asked to not do what they did, but those who opposed nuclear plants in Japan. The specific reasoning of the anti-nuclear activists and others may have included faulty logic and bad information about nuclear power, but on the list of potential problems was the possibility that what actually happened would happen. They were right. And they were not “stopped clock” right. They were right because they saw a real danger that really existed.

We probably have to build new nuclear power plants. Burning fossil fuels at the rate we are burning them will cause disasters that will make us forget bout our nuclear woes. But it is not true that the nuclear power industry is ready to step in and build significantly safer plants now, and it is not true that “alternative” (a term we should stop using!) energy solutions such as geothermal, solar, wind, and so on deployed on a smart grid with significant enhancements of efficiency at both production and use ends of the grid comprises a secondary solution.

Anyway, I gave only a short summary of what Kiger outlines in his excellent piece. Go now and read: Fukushima’s Radioactive Water Leak: What You Should Know

A handful of news items have come up recently mainly pertaining to contamination and other issues, so we thought an update was in order.

Conflicts of Interest Involving Japan’s Nuclear Regulatory Agency and Other Stakeholders

There have been a number of points where it looked like conflicts of interest between the regulators and the regulatees (as it were), or at least the appearance thereof, were in effect since the time of this disaster. It is happening again.

A commission was formed late last month, including six experts, to set up new safety standards for nuclear reactors in Japan. Four of the six members of the commission have received various amounts of money from Japan’s Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA). This is not necessarily a bad thing, or unexpected, as experts get hired and one needs experts on a commission like this. Also, these individuals were required to report these associations and payments. Nonetheless, the time has passed when people (the victims in nuclear disasters) can easily be told “Don’t worry, we’re acting in your best interest” by any nuclear regulatory agency or by any utility operating nuclear plants, or, for that matter, “experts” in the field in general who have in the recent past demonstrated an almost cult-like adherence to untenable pseudoscience regarding nuclear safety.

The journal Nature has the story.

Much of the uproar over the handling of the Fukushima disaster came from the public perception that conflicts of interests led regulators … to favour cost-savings over safety. … It seems that Japanese policy-makers, despite the many public demonstrations, still haven’t got to grips with the tendency for conflicts of interest to lead to bad decisions and, even if they don’t, to breed mistrust.

Similarly troubling is the rush with which the government reopened two of the country’s shuttered nuclear reactors in July without fully evaluating the seismology of the ground beneath. Last week, at its second meeting, a subcommittee of the NRA could not confirm whether a fault line running under a seawater-intake channel — used to cool the reactors in an emergency — is active.

At stake is whether the fault is a landslide fault or a more dangerous, deeper tectonic one. …

Large sectors of the public opposed the reactor restarts with demonstrations of a fervour not seen in Japan in decades. The country had already proved that it could get by, at least in the short term, with no nuclear power. Some scientists had pointed out the uncertainty over the seismic fault, and suggested how to deal with it, before the reactors were restarted. Japan was supposed to emerge from the Fukushima crisis with a new respect for reactor safety and better awareness of the need to convince people of that safety. It hasn’t made a very good start.

US Nuclear Regulatory Commission to recommend new rules for Mark I and Mark II reactors

The Fukushima plant used Mark I and Mark II reactors, an early General Electric product, which are also used in several other plants around the world including at the two nuclear plants in Minnesota. These systems have a core that includes the nuclear fuel, surrounded by a primary containment vessel, which in turn is enclosed in a building which serves as secondary containment. During certain kinds of nuclear accidents, gasses can escape the primary containment, possibly through cracks or pipes being blown off from pressure build up, and fill the secondary containment area. These gasses would consist of water vapor, hydrogen in concentrations sufficient to explode, and radionucleotides. Under these conditions, the secondary containment can explode, spreading nasty nuclear stuff around the landscape in an uncontrolled way.

One way to reduce the likelihood of this happening is to install vents to relieve the pressure. This allows a plant operator to open the vent and avoid a catastrophic explosion. The down side of this, of course, is that radionuceotides are released into the atmosphere.

One way to reduce mitigate against this effect is to filter the vents. This is technologically difficult and expensive, costing in excess of abut $16 million dollars per plant. The filter designs are diverse and interesting but beyond the scope of this post.

Most Mark I reactors have had vents installed, and some Mark II have as well, but most of these vents are not filtered.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is poised to recommend that filtered vents be installed on all US based plants. Here’s what is interesting about this: Using their own method of determining cost benefit ratios, adding a $16 million dollar plus filtered vent to each plant is way more expensive than the estimated cost of cleaning up after a release from an unfiltered event, given their estimates of the likelihood of such an event happening. But the are recommending the change anyway, stating that this fits with the policy of “deep protection” against disaster. It is an overt and clear response to Fukushima. In the post Fukushima world, at least parts of the nuclear power industry are willing to spend mucho extra dollars on safety, even beyond what the usual cost-benefit risk assessments tell them to do.

This story is addressed HERE by the New York Times.

Radionucleotides are Accumulating in Lake Kasumigaura in Ibaraki Prefecture

Kasumigaura is a system of lakes forming an artificially closed basin (with presumed underground communication with the sea?) near the Fukushima plant. The catch basin for this lake was blanketed in nuclear fallout from the disaster, and it can be assumed that this material has to some extent eroded into the lake. This material is moving into the lake very slowly and will continue to do so for a long time, possibly decades.

Most of the material in question is cesium–134 and cesium–137. Cesium is very sticky, so it adheres to surfaces very well. This probably means that much of the cesium moved into the lake while stuck to various size sediments. Kilo for kilo, then, a given mass of gravel would contain a certain amount of cesium, sand much much more owing to the extra surface area, silt even more, and clay even more, all else being equal.

Scientist have been sampling the lake bottom mud as well as the water. From an article in the Japan Times

According to the latest round of monitoring, which was the fourth of its kind, and carried out in September and October, no traceable amount of cesium was detected in the water itself. The mud samples from the lake and the rivers, meanwhile, were found to contain up to 5,200 becquerels/kg of cesium–134 and cesium–137, compared with a maximum of 500 Bq/kg detected a year ago, a maximum of 5,800 Bq/kg in February this year and a maximum of 4,800 Bq/kg in July. The sludge sampled from the bottom of the lake registered cesium contamination ranging from 97 Bq/kg to 520 Bq/kg. That is lower than the maximum 1,300 Bq/kg registered in February, but higher than the 340 Bq/kg detected in the first round of monitoring a year ago. The government safety limit for cesium-tainted food is 10 Bq/kg for water and 100 Bq/kg for most other foods. The mud samples from Kasumigaura have surpassed these figures, but mud is usually not ingested as food. Government regulations state that soil containing more than 8,000 Bq/kg of cesium is considered to emit levels of radiation that pose a danger to human health and therefore must be sealed away.

So, the amount of contamination of the lake bottom seems to be both rising over the long term and variable, possibly leveling off. The problem is, given the nature of sediment flow into the lake, these numbers should be continuing to rise steadily. For this reason, there is some confusion and concern as to how to interpret these results.

Several species of fish that live on the bottom of the lake have been sown to regularly exceed the safe limits of contamination and their sale has been banned. The water is known to contain cesium but at levels designated as safe.

The density an intensity of sampling in this catchment has probably been insufficient, and is being criticized. Sampling has shown that some of the rivers and streams have a decreasing level of contamination while others are “hot spots” with very high levels. It has been proposed that one way to deal with the contamination is to use the Fukushima Method: Dump the water into the sea, in this case by opening the dam that separates the freshwater of the lake from the salt water of the sea. Ironically, the demand for water from this lake has dropped because the economy of the immediate area was ruined by the nuclear disaster, so this would have reduced effects.

Highly Radioactive Fish Have Been Found

Related to this, some interesting things have been discovered among the local fish. As noted, bottom feeders have been shown to be contaminated beyond usability. A different kind of fish, the Ayu, or Sweetfish (Plecoglossus altivelis) has a very rapid turnover and short lifepan, and is not a bottom feeder. This is a key element in the Japanese diet, and is the fish eaten by the famous Japanese Cormorants. These fish don’t live long enough, or feed enough on the bottom, to accumulate very much contamination and have been shown to be generally safe to eat. They form a special sort of sampling procedure whereby spontaneous levels of contamination in the water can be assessed. That they are not particularly “hot” is a good thing.

But other fish turn out to be highly contaminated. From Asia and Japan Watch:

…in August, two greenlings caught 20 kilometers north of the Fukushima plant were found to have cesium levels of 25,800 becquerels per kilogram, the highest level ever measured in fish since the nuclear accident. The government standard for food is 100 becquerels per kilogram.

And in March, tests recorded a level of 18,700 becquerels per kilogram in freshwater salmon in the Niidagawa river near Iitate, a village northwest of the nuclear plant.

Furthermore, the concentration of cesium in freshwater salmon and char caught since March has not been decreasing, leading to restrictions on the shipment of such fish from Fukushima Prefecture and surrounding areas.

Greenlings are “lingcod” and live in the sea, and tend to feed on the bottom and I believe they are relatively long lived. Freshwater salmon and char live in the freshwater streams feeding into the Lake Kasumigaura system, and eat a variety of foods and are much longer lived, depending on when caught, than the sweetfish.

The extremely high levels of contamination in these fish in waters that should be decreasing in contamination levels seems enigmatic, and a study is being launched to look further into this.

I have a hypothesis that explains many of these observations. Fish like trout, salmon, and char eat, among other things, insects on the surface, gorging on hatches. A hatch is a large number of insects flying around and spending time over water, or often, just falling into the water, after emerging from a body of water where they spent an aquatic phase. I’ve written before about the role that insects such as dragonflies and lake flies serve the role of moving nutrients from their “final” resting place at the bottom of ponds and lakes, out across the landscape. These animals start off as an egg, and then turn into their adult form underwater, accumulating nutrients …. and cesium? …. as they grow. Then they fly out of the water and die everywhere. Or, are eaten by selected species of fish. From clay-rich lake bottom, where radioactive cesium can accumulate in sufficient density to disqualify bottom feeders from human consumption, to the mouths of trout, salmon and char. I don’t know if the Japanese researchers are thinking about it this way, but I hope it is given some thought.

Previous updates on this disaster are archived HERE.