October 1, 2013

Oct 1, 2013 | Fukushima Accident Updates

  • The Tokyo Electric Company president says they will probably scrap F. Daiichi units 5 and 6. In an interview Saturday, Naomi Hirose said neither unit will ever be used for electrical generation. “In absolutely no way am I considering using [units 5 and 6] as power plants,” Hirose said. “It’s impossible to decommission them right now [because of the need to focus on the Nos. 1-4 reactors]. I’m thinking about how they [the sites of Nos. 5 and 6 reactors] can be used for the Nos. 1-4 reactors. A promising idea is to use them as training facilities.” It is believed that Hirose made this statement due to PM Shinzo Abe’s suggestion to scrap both units two weeks ago. http://the-japan-news.com/news/article/0000687045  On Monday, Industry Minister Toshimitsu Motegi said Tepco should also decommission all four units at Fukushima Daini. He told a parliamentary committee, “Thinking about the current feelings of the people in Fukushima Prefecture, I don’t think we can treat Fukushima Daini in the same way as other nuclear power plants.” F. Daini is located about 12 kilometers south of F. Daiichi and all four units are fully functional. http://english.kyodonews.jp/news/2013/09/248877.html
  • Tepco has set a firm criteria for discharging rainwater buildup to the sea. The limit for unconditional release is now 10 Becquerels per liter of “all-Beta” activity, 20 Bq/liter of Cesium-134, and 30 Bq/liter of Cesium-137. All limits are three times less than the national standard for release. Those waters that have activity above the self-imposed limits will be pumped to specific tanks designated for very-low-level activity storage. A new limit for Tritium discharge is pending while Tepco awaits instruction from the Nuclear Regulation Authority. Because Tritium’s Beta emission is so low in energy, it takes considerable time to measure it with any certainty. http://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/english/news/20131001_39.html  Four tons of mildly-contaminated rainwater escaped from a storage tank. When draining rainwater buildup from a coffer dam around a group of storage tanks, the water was pumped to an already-filled tank by mistake. Since the receiving tank was full, the pumped water leaked out of a connecting pipe and onto the ground. An estimated 4 tons of the water escaped and soaked into the ground before the mistake was noticed. The rainwater contained about 160 Bq/ liter of “all Beta” activity. http://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/english/news/20131001_46.html
  • Tepco has posted a detailed listing of the Pacific Ocean contamination levels off F. Daiichi. It includes a graphic delineating the three areas of interest – Outside the station’s port, inside the port, and inside the unit #1-#4 intake channel (quay). Each location’s radionuclide levels are linked just beneath the graphic. http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/nu/fukushima-np/f1/smp/index-e.html  At the same time, the Nuclear Regulation Authority has posted their sampling results out to 200 kilometers off-shore. http://radioactivity.nsr.go.jp/en/contents/8000/7255/24/424_0904.pdf
  • The test run of the high-tech water decontamination system at F. Daiichi was briefly suspended. A greatly reduced flow out of one of three process lines was discovered on Sunday, causing the shutdown. A rubber mat was found covering the outlet inside one of the process tanks. The mat was used to keep a ladder from slipping. The mat was removed and the test run for all three flow-paths was restarted at 2:28am on Monday. http://mainichi.jp/english/english/newsselect/news/20130930p2a00m0na003000c.html
  • Tepco has raised the assumed volume of leakage into the station’s quay to 400 tons per day. The speculation is based on a new groundwater flow simulation. The previous assumption of 300 tons per day was reported by the Tokyo government in early August. Tepco says the simulation estimates total underground flow around the four damaged units at F. Daiichi is 800 tons per day, with 400 tons seeping into the turbine building basements. The remainder is assumed to be flowing into the station’s barricaded inner quay. Tepco president Hirose made the revelation to a special government committee meeting, but stressed that the company does not think all of the groundwater is contaminated. Regardless, he said that Tepco is making the worst-case-assumption that all water is contaminated. http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2013/09/27/national/tepco-raises-toxic-water-estimate-to-400-tons-a-day/#.Ukl84oHD8dV
  • Water has been found “oozing” from another wastewater storage tank at F. Daiichi. This time, it is a tank at the undamaged unit #6. The water in the 500-ton tank is seawater removed from the basement of the unit’s turbine building after the tsunami receded in March, 2011. The seawater has very low levels of contamination, at “around several dozen Becquerels”. How much has seeped from the tank and or what may have happened to it is not yet available. http://jen.jiji.com/jc/eng?g=eco&k=2013092900049
  • Tepco has also announced their submittal for permission to restart units #6 and #7 at Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuke station. They have received a written set of conditions for restart from Niigata Prefecture, home to the nuclear complex, all but one of which are already in-place. Tepco has already said they will install the required filtered containment depressurization venting system. Additional measures already taken include… upgrading mobile emergency power supplies (April, 2011), upgrading the anti-tsunami sea wall (July, 2013), deployment of air-cooled gas generators (March, 2012), and deployment of alternative heat exchanger vehicles (March, 2013). Unfortunately, the official request is currently available in Japanese-only form. However, the summary Press release is in English. http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp-com/release/2013/1230976_5130.html
  • Industry Minister Motegi says Tepco’s finances are stabilizing. “Financial institutions will continue extending loans to the utility,” Motegi said on an NHK program. “Improvement of its balance of payments is now in sight.” Tepco is currently negotiating for refinancing. They feel their chances of success are good following their NRA request for restarting two units at Kashiwazaki-Kariwa station. http://english.kyodonews.jp/news/2013/09/248650.html
  • Two revealing reports on the Fukushima accident and America’s flawed involvement have been published by author (and friend) Paul Blustein. The first, Fukushima’s Worst-Case Scenarios, shows that much about what the world heard concerning the accident was wrong. This strong claim is based on recently-released documents from prestigious Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, under the Freedom of Information Act. Though un-related to the current wastewater situation at F. Daiichi, Blustein says, “These revelations, together with additional new information, debunk some powerful myths about Fukushima and have weighty implications for the debate about nuclear power that has raged in the accident’s aftermath.” http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2013/09/fukushima_disaster_new_information_about_worst_case_scenarios.html  Blustein’s second article, Shaken Faith, chronicles how America’s mistaken speculations on the accident plus the situation with the spent fuel pools undermined the Japanese government. As a result, millions of Japanese continue to question what their government tells them about the risks of radiation exposure. http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2013/09/nrc_response_to_fukushima_a_mistake_turned_public_opinion_against_japan.html
  • The Environment Ministry says they will build 10 underground contaminated waste facilities near F. Daiichi. There will be 5 in each of two towns – Okuma and Naraha. Local opponents have opposed all planning, arguing that they have not been consulted and the land is sacred to them and their ancestors. There will be two kinds of facilities. One will incinerate burnable material and the other will store what cannot be burned. The ministry has not divulged exact locations, saying they will first inform the local communities. Another plan concerns building a facility in the Futaba area, adjacent to F. Daiichi, for temporary storage of contaminated waste containers. The storage time limit will be three years, with the expectation that Tokyo will have a 30-year facility by then. http://www.japantoday.com/category/national/view/govt-announces-plans-for-10-contaminated-waste-storage-facilities-in-fukushima?utm_campaign=jt_newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_source=jt_newsletter_2013-09-28_PM
  • Former PM Junichiro Koizumi has jumped onto the “no-nukes” bandwagon. He believes the current administration should ban all nukes before it is too late. “I will be dead decades from now and may not be able to see a Japan without nuclear power plants. But making it happen is what a true statesman should do,” he said. Koizumi calls current PM Abe’s support of nuke restarts “unfortunate”. His reason for wanting all nukes scrapped is the issue of spent fuel disposal, and his concern that Japan will never be able to deal with an ever-increasing volume of spent fuel. http://japandailypress.com/former-japan-pm-koizumi-urges-abe-to-push-for-zero-nuclear-power-immediately-3036818/
  • Attempts to confuse reactors with bombs have upset many people in Hiroshima. Many antinuclear protests use this confusion to support their aversion to atomic power. But, to those who have suffered the aftermath of a nuclear weapon, the differences between reactors and bombs dwarf the similarities. Hiroshima Mayor Kazumi Matsui said, “Our position, and this is a position we can never compromise, is that nuclear weapons are an absolute evil. [But] I oppose connecting the two simply because they both involve radiation.” He stressed that the widespread sentiment is that Hiroshima has endured something more terrible than the aftermath of a nuclear accident, and people resent getting the two lumped together. Many of the city’s population point to 140,000 being killed by the Hiroshima bombing and the after-effects of its fallout, but, no-one has died from the radiation released out of Fukushima. This difference alone should avert the confusion, but some ruthlessly cling to keeping it alive. Professor Robert Jacobs at the Peace Institute says the similarities as being considerable, calling Fukushima a “slow-motion nuclear war”. Author Hiromichi Ugaya, who recently published “Road from Hiroshima to Fukushima”, considers reactors and bombs to share much, “The atomic bomb and nuclear power are like twin siblings if you trace their history.” But, most of the city’s denizens feel tying the two together is wrong. http://www.japantoday.com/category/national/view/attempts-to-link-fukushima-hiroshima-upset-some?utm_campaign=jt_newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_source=jt_newsletter_2013-09-30_AM