May 9, 2012

May 9, 2012 | Fukushima Accident Updates

  • Fukushima held an un-announced nuclear emergency drill on Monday. The scenario was very similar to what happened on March 11, 2011…a serious earthquake followed by huge tsunami hitting Fukushima Daiichi. The drill was for all municipalities in the prefecture and to assess how fast their human response would be and test communication systems reliability. When the calamity actually happened, most local officials in the prefecture found out about the F. Daiichi accident from television news, which was clearly unacceptable and a violation of national nuclear emergency law. Once all emergency facilities were fully staffed and communications verified, the drill ended. (NHK World)
  • A Mainichi Shimbun poll shows that 63% of its readers do not what Oi units #3 & 4 restarted. This should be compared to a similar poll a month ago which revealed nearly 70% of the newspaper’s readers were against restart. (The Mainichi failed to point this out) The poll also showed that 77% do not trust the government’s new safety standards. In addition, 74% said they “can endure” any power restrictions this summer caused by not restarting nukes. (Mainichi Shimbun)
  • The Gifu Prefectural assembly has unanimously rejected any support for nuke restarts. The prefecture is entirely land-locked and has no nuclear plants within its border. Nonetheless, the assembly has adopted a position that resident support must be won before any nuclear plants can begin operations. Their formal statement says that the new restart standards created by Tokyo were made by politicians, and not by nuclear experts. Thus, the new canons of restart cannot be trusted. The statement also asserts that new, expert-driven standards cannot be created until all investigations into the Fukushima accident are complete. When reminded that Gifu has no nuclear plants, one official said that a nuclear accident has no borders and everyone is affected. (NHK World)
  • On Monday, a worker at Fukushima Daiichi was found to have a small amount of contamination around his mouth. No contamination was found inside the nasal passages or inside the mouth. The worker washed his face and no further contamination remained. A whole body count for internal contamination proved negative. (TEPCO)
  • One of the nuclear power stations in Japan, Onagawa NPS, has built a new sea wall to protect against the rare-but-not-impossible tsunami. The wall raises the barrier between the reactors and the sea to a height of 17 meters. The original sea wall was 14 meters high, thus the new addition added another 3 meters. (Kyodo News)