February 12, 2015

Feb 12, 2015 | Fukushima Accident Updates

  • The filling of contaminated equipment tunnels is further delayed. The project will be set back at least two weeks. Tepco says the timetable revision is because of two problems. First, all decommissioning and recovery labor activity was stopped due to the two recent fatal construction accidents. Resumption of work projects has been slow and cautious since the tragedies. The second reason is the pouring of cement into the tunnels flooded with contaminated water has not stopped the outflow from the turbine building basements. Tepco has asked the Nuclear Regulation Authority for permission to fill the junctions between unblocked equipment tunnels connected to the buildings. The NRA seems amenable to the plan. Tepco also said they will continue to look for what else can be done to stop the outflow. It is not clear how this setback might impact the building of the 1.5 kilometer-long ice wall to surround the structures. http://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/english/news/nuclear.html
  • Many exclusion area homes will be torn down. About 1,080 residences in three municipalities will be affected. Nahara Town will have the most at 870. Reasons for the demolitions include residents having permanently moved to new homes outside the no-go zone, rain and wind damage, and roaming animal intrusions. Local officials say another reason is decontamination inefficiency on the part of Tokyo. All homes must be decontaminated before being razed to prevent making contamination airborne. Tokyo will pay for the decontamination and demolitions. The Environment Ministry says the average cost of decontaminating a residence is about $8,300 and takes two weeks. http://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/english/news/nuclear.html
  • It’s official… Takahama units 3&4 have passed the government’s safety review for restarts. The Nuclear Regulation Authority announced it will issue a screening certificate verifying that both units meet or exceed Japan’s new safety regulations. One major post-Fukushima upgrade has been increasing the maximum tsunami surge height and raising the tidal gate for the intake structures to 8.5 meters in height. Though happy with the NRA decision, station owner Kyushu Electric Co. says restarts will probably not happen before November. The NRA must approve other documents in the application including added construction work, specified design details, and safety programs for operation and emergency management. Then the NRA must make a detailed site inspection, and subsequently seek local approval for restart. http://the-japan-news.com/news/article/0001927479
  • Meanwhile, a small number of antinuclear die-hards are protesting the NRA’s decision on Takahama. Some 30 people gathered outside the building where the NRA made the Takahama approval announcement. The protest’s leader said Takahama nukes are not fit to be restarted, including the NRA not assessing evacuation plans around the nuke station, local residents in Fukui Prefecture not having the details of the restart adequately explained, and the facility allegedly riddled with flaws that make it inherently unsafe… the same objections made with last year’s decision to allow the Sendai units to be restarted. http://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/english/news/20150212_24.html
  • More info on Muon tomography at F. Daiichi. One question is why doesn’t Tepco just bore some holes in the containments and slip camera’s inside to see where the fuel is? One reason is the extremely high radiation levels prohibiting human habitation for enough time to make any progress. Another reason is that boring holes would make new leakage paths for contaminated material to exit the massive inner containment. However, Muon tomography minimizes necessary worker exposures and does not need to have the containment walls further compromised. The location of damaged fuel is needed to effectively plan for the removal of the material. Duncan W. McBranch of Los Alamos National Laboratory said the fuel removal tools “can be much better designed if you had a good idea of what’s inside,” but “nobody wants to go in to find out.” http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/18/world/asia/measuring-damage-at-fukushima-without-eyes-on-the-inside.html?_r=0  The technology was created by the Decision Sciences Corporation in conjunction with Los Alamos. The technology is formally called “Multi-Mode Passive Detection System” (MMPDS) and is currently used for examining inside shipping containers to see if they contain nuclear threats. http://www.decisionsciencescorp.com/content/uploads/2012/07/MMPDS_Fact_Sheet.pdf The detectors used by MMPDS were developed by Tokyo’s High Energy Accelerator Research Organization (KEK) and can see the position of nuclear fuel more than 30-50 centimeters in in diameter. KEK professor emeritus Fumihiko Takasaki said, “It will be very important simply to confirm the hypothesis that the fuel is no longer in the pressure vessel.” The machine being installed at F. Daiichi, supplied by the Kurion Corp., is a mobile version of MMPDS. http://mainichi.jp/english/english/newsselect/news/20150212p2a00m0na017000c.html   [Comment – I can’t wait for the results. I am one of the two nuclear writers – the other being Rod Adams of Atomic Insights – who say that (at most) very little molten fuel has escaped the unit #1 reactor vessel, and none made it out of the unit #2 RPV. In fact, I’m on record saying that unit #2’s core damage is only about as bad as with the Three Mile Island incident in 1979. We should find out about unit #1 in March, and unit #2 a few weeks later.]