February 10, 2014

Feb 10, 2014 | Fukushima Accident Updates

  • Fukushima staff moved another 44 spent fuel bundles from unit #4 last week. To date, 308 of 1533 bundles have been transferred out of the 5th floor spent fuel pool and safely submerged in another pool inside the neighboring ground-level common fuel handling facility. http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/nu/fukushima-np/removal4u/index-e.html
  • Nuclear-neutral Yoichi Masuzoe has won the Tokyo gubernatorial election in a landslide. A graduate of the University of Tokyo, Masuzoe is the former Minister of Health under three Prime Ministers, taught political science and has become a well-known television commentator. He campaigned on a platform of improving the city’s social welfare system and making the 2020 Tokyo Olympics the best ever. He soundly defeated news media favorite, former PM Morihiro Hosokawa, who had been running on a firm antinuclear platform. Hosokawa and his ally, another ex-PM Junichiro Koizumi, took to the campaign trail to stir a national debate on nuclear energy. It did not happen. Masuzoe did not take sides in the nuclear discussion because he said it was a national issue and not a prefectural one. In the final tally, Masuzoe garnered 2,113,000 votes, former Bar Association president Kenji Utsunomiya a distant second with 983,000 votes, and Hosokawa was third with 956,000. There was a relatively low voter turn-out (~46%) for an off-year election, probably due to the heavy snowstorm of Saturday. http://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/english/news/20140209_17.html — http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2014/02/09/national/masuzoe-set-for-victory-over-anti-nuclear-foe-in-tokyo-gubernatorial-poll/#.Uvei18uYYdU — http://jen.jiji.com/jc/eng?g=eco&k=2014021000026
  • Tokyo will study how to best inform the public about Fukushima Daiichi. Tepco and government announcements have been besieged with disapprovals concerning use of technical terms and lack of specific information demanded by critics. As a result, a study group will be created to deal with these issues. It is believed the panel will include Fukushima evacuees, local officials from the prefecture, as well as agricultural and fishing groups. The first session will be held on February 17th in Fukushima City. Gallery seating will be provided for interested citizens. This will be the first time ordinary citizens will take part in official study groups relative to F. Daiichi. http://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/english/news/20140207_01.html
  • Additional information on plans to release F. Daiichi groundwater to the sea. The scheme to pump out some groundwater flow before it reaches the damaged reactor buildings has been ready to go since last March. However, Kyodo News reported the delay was due to “concerns for baseless rumors [that] remain strong particularly among fishermen, which has prevented the scheme from being implemented.” Recently, Industry Minister Toshimitsu Motegi said they “obtained ‘a certain level of understanding as to the necessity’ of the groundwater bypass plan from the National Federation of Fisheries Co-operative Association” which opened the door to begin the process. The Nuclear Regulation Authority has not yet approved the allowable concentrations for releases. http://ex-skf.blogspot.com.au/2014/02/fukushima-i-npp-groundwater-bypass-plan.html
  • Tepco will begin the “massive” job of reviewing a great number of contaminated water analyses taken since 3/11/11. The re-evaluation is because of a recently discovered error with the analytical procedure used by the staff. One of the groundwater wells between unit #1 and #2 was initially reported to be 900,000 Bq/liter, but it is now known that the procedure was faulty and only recording one-tenth of the actual activity. The company shifted to a different, more-reliable methodology in October. Tepco will re-examine all data compiled using the erroneous methodology, including the groundwater tests run on the liquids beneath and around the storage tanks that leaked last year. Spokesperson Masayuki Ono said, “We are very sorry, but we found cases in which beta radiation readings turned out to be wrong when the radioactivity concentration of a sample was high.” http://mainichi.jp/english/english/newsselect/news/20140207p2g00m0dm038000c.html — http://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/english/news/20140208_02.html
  • Fukushima’s unprecedented child thyroid study has found more possible cancer cases. The new number of cases is 75, up from 59 reported last November. Since November, an additional 28,000 children were examined. So far, 254,000 have been examined out of the 375,000 children living in Fukushima Prefecture during the March, 2011 crisis. Research Chair Hokuto Hoshi said the nuclear accident is unlikely to be the cause of any of the discovered cancers because of the 4-5 year latency period between radioactive Iodine exposure and thyroid cancer expression. Regardless, the data being currently compiled will prove valuable. Researcher Shinichi Suzuki said, “We hope to look for unknown types of gene mutations, other than those known to be associated with the generation of thyroid gland cancer, to study if they could serve as markers for determining if the cancers were induced by radiation.” He added that there is no way to distinguish between radiation-induced cancers and those caused by other factors, but analysis of the tumors removed from the children might shed light on a possible way to do it. The average age of the children with definitive or suspected cancer tumors is 14.7. http://ajw.asahi.com/article/0311disaster/fukushima/AJ201402080047
  • Dr. Jerry Cuttler says Hiroshima/Nagasaki data shows that current risk models for radiation exposure are incorrect. He says the incidence of leukemia in 96,000 atomic bomb survivors serves as compelling evidence that the Linear/No Threshold model, used to estimate risk around the world, is wrong. Further, the data demonstrates a threshold for leukemia at ~500 millisieverts exposure, and lower exposures actually show positive biological effects in the bomb survivors. He concludes, “The continued application of the invalid linear dose–response model for cancer risk assessment raises enormous fear about the safety of exposures to small doses of radiation.” Dr. Cuttler’s letter has been posted in the Archives of Toxicology Journal. [Arch Toxicol (2013) 87:2063-2081] The download can be accessed via Rod Adam’s Atomic Insights article found here… http://atomicinsights.com/wp-content/uploads/Cuttler-2014_-Leukemia-incidence-of-96000-Hiroshima-survivors_ArchToxicol.pdf
  • Tepco has reluctantly accepted an arbitrator’s decision concerning additional compensation for ~1,200 Fukushima citizens. 180 evacuees from Iitate Village and another 1,000 from Date City, which lies outside the mandated evacuation zone, want more money because of health concerns due to low level radiation exposure. The Science Ministry’s Center for the Settlement of Fukushima Nuclear Damage Claims says they support the resident’s claims. Tepco has steadfastly maintained there is no scientific evidence for the additional pay-outs, but Friday the company caved to the arbitrator’s decision. However, Tepco continues to say that while it has no scientific responsibility to pay this compensation, they were responsible for the accident that has caused the resident’s unempirical fears. http://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/english/news/20140207_43.html