Nuclear Meltdown Watch

[Iamwhomiam]

Want to read some really good news?

Vermont Yankee is finally closing, being decommissioned.

August 27, 2013
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Media Relations
Entergy
mburns@entergy.com
(802) 258-2143

Paula Waters
Entergy
pwater1@entergy.com
504-576-4380

Entergy to Close, Decommission Vermont Yankee

Decision driven by sustained low power prices, high cost structure and wholesale electricity market design flaws for Vermont Yankee plant

Focus to remain on safety during remaining operation and after shutdown

New Orleans, La. – Entergy Corporation (NYSE: ETR) today said it plans to close and decommission its Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Station in Vernon, Vt. The station is expected to cease power production after its current fuel cycle and move to safe shutdown in the fourth quarter of 2014. The station will remain under the oversight of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission throughout the decommissioning process.

"This was an agonizing decision and an extremely tough call for us," said Leo Denault, Entergy's chairman and chief executive officer. "Vermont Yankee has an immensely talented, dedicated and loyal workforce, and a solid base of support among many in the community. We recognize that closing the plant on this schedule was not the outcome they had hoped for, but we have reluctantly concluded that it is the appropriate action for us to take under the circumstances."

The decision to close Vermont Yankee in 2014 was based on a number of financial factors, including:

* A natural gas market that has undergone a transformational shift in supply due to the impacts of shale gas, resulting in sustained low natural gas prices and wholesale energy prices.
* A high cost structure for this single unit plant. Since 2002, the company has invested more than $400 million in the safe and reliable operation of the facility. In addition, the financial impact of cumulative regulation is especially challenging to a small plant in these market conditions.
* Wholesale market design flaws that continue to result in artificially low energy and capacity prices in the region, and do not provide adequate compensation to merchant nuclear plants for the fuel diversity benefits they provide.

Making the decision now and operating through the fourth quarter of 2014 allows time to duly and properly plan for a safe and orderly shutdown and prepare filings with the NRC regarding shutdown and decommissioning. Entergy will establish a decommissioning planning organization responsible for planning and executing the safe and efficient decommissioning of the facility. Once the plant is shut down, workers will de-fuel the reactor and place the plant into SAFSTOR, a process whereby a nuclear facility is placed and maintained in a condition that allows it to be safely secured, monitored and stored.

"We are committed to the safe and reliable operation of Vermont Yankee until shutdown, followed by a safe, orderly and environmentally responsible decommissioning process," Denault said.

Commenting on the future of nuclear power, Denault said: "Entergy remains committed to nuclear as an important long-term component of its generating portfolio. Nuclear energy is safe, reliable, carbon-free and contributes to supply diversity and energy security as part of a balanced energy portfolio."

Financial Implications
Entergy plans to recognize an after-tax impairment charge of approximately $181 million in the third quarter of 2013 related to the decision to shut down the plant at the end of this current operating cycle. In addition to this initial charge, Entergy expects to recognize charges totaling approximately $55 to $60 million associated with future severance and employee retention costs through the end of next year. These charges will be classified as special items, and therefore, excluded from operational results.

The company noted that the estimated operational earnings contribution from Vermont Yankee was expected to be around breakeven in 2013, and generally declining over the next few years. As a result of this decision and based on continuing operations into fourth quarter 2014, the estimated operational earnings change, excluding these special items, is expected to be modestly accretive within two years after shutdown, and cash flow is expected to increase approximately $150 to $200 million in total through 2017, compared to Vermont Yankee's continued operation.

Regarding decommissioning, assuming end of operations in fourth quarter 2014, the amount required to meet the NRC minimum for decommissioning financial assurance for license termination is $566 million. The Vermont Yankee decommissioning trust had a balance of approximately $582 million as of July 31, 2013, excluding the $40 million guarantee by Entergy Corporation to satisfy NRC requirements following the 2009 review of financial assurance levels. Filings with the NRC for planned shutdown activities will determine whether any other financial assurance may be required and will specifically address funding for spent fuel management, which will be required until the federal government takes possession of the fuel and removes it from the site, per its current obligations.

Vermont Yankee, a single unit boiling water reactor, began commercial operation in 1972. Entergy acquired the plant from Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Corporation in 2002. In March 2011, the NRC renewed the station's operating license for an additional 20 years, until 2032.

Additional information regarding today's announcement is available in the Frequently Asked Questions section of www.entergy.com.

Entergy Corporation, which celebrates its 100th birthday this year, is an integrated energy company engaged primarily in electric power production and retail distribution operations. Entergy owns and operates power plants with approximately 30,000 megawatts of electric generating capacity, including more than 10,000 megawatts of nuclear power, making it one of the nation's leading nuclear generators. Entergy delivers electricity to 2.8 million utility customers in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas.

-30-
Additional information can be accessed online at
www.entergy.com.

[seemslikeadream]

1 September 2013 Last updated at 05:09 ET


Fukushima radiation levels '18 times higher' than thought

Radiation levels around Japan's Fukushima nuclear plant are 18 times higher than previously thought, Japanese authorities have warned.

Last week the plant's operator reported radioactive water had leaked from a storage tank into the ground.

It now says readings taken near the leaking tank on Saturday showed radiation was high enough to prove lethal within four hours of exposure.

The plant was crippled by the 2011 earthquake and tsunami.

The Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) had originally said the radiation emitted by the leaking water was around 100 millisieverts an hour.

However, the company said the equipment used to make that recording could only read measurements of up to 100 millisieverts.

The new recording, using a more sensitive device, showed a level of 1,800 millisieverts an hour.

The new reading will have direct implications for radiation doses received by workers who spent several days trying to stop the leak last week, the BBC's Rupert Wingfield-Hayes reports from Tokyo.

In addition, Tepco says it has discovered a leak on another pipe emitting radiation levels of 230 millisieverts an hour.

The plant has seen a series of water leaks and power failures.

The 2011 tsunami knocked out cooling systems to the reactors, three of which melted down.

The damage from the tsunami has necessitated the constant pumping of water to cool the reactors.

This is believed to be the fourth major leak from storage tanks at Fukushima since 2011 and the worst so far in terms of volume.

After the latest leak, Japan's nuclear-energy watchdog raised the incident level from one to three on the international scale measuring the severity of atomic accidents, which has a maximum of seven.

Experts have said the scale of water leakage may be worse than officials have admitted.

[seemslikeadream]

Japan government abandons hands-off approach to Fukushima clean-up


By Linda Sieg and Mari Saito
TOKYO | Sun Sep 1, 2013 5:12pm EDT
(Reuters) - Japan's government is moving to take a more direct role in the clean-up of the wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant, as concerns grow over the ability of embattled operator Tokyo Electric to handle the legacy of the worst atomic disaster in a quarter century.

The concerns have also revived debate about the future of Tokyo Electric Power Co (Tepco) itself, including early-stage proposals to put its toxic nuclear assets under government control and leave the rest of the company as a provider of power to the nation's biggest economic region.

"I want the government to have a responsible framework - not just for checking what Tokyo Electric is doing to deal with Fukushima - but for the government to commit to dealing with the Fukushima problem itself and conduct this as a joint operation, including the water problem and decommissioning," said Tadamori Oshima, who heads the ruling Liberal Democratic Party's taskforce on post-disaster reconstruction.

"Concerning the question of what the government will pay for and what Tepco will pay for, I think we need to debate and redraw the line," Oshima told Reuters in an interview.

Public worries about Fukushima, revived by news of leaks of radiated water at the plant, have threatened to further delay the restart of other off-line reactors - a key element of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's recipe for economic revival and a pillar of the turnaround plan Tepco has given its creditor banks.

Japan's nuclear industry, which once provided a third of the nation's power, has nearly ground to a halt since a massive quake and tsunami struck the coastal Fukushima plant in March 2011, causing reactor meltdowns. Tepco has been pumping water over the reactors to keep them cool, storing the radioactive waste water as well as contaminated ground water in ever-growing numbers of above-ground tanks.

"What is clear by now and can hardly be ignored is that Tepco as a private company is overwhelmed by the containment work in Fukushima," said Martin Schulz, a senior research fellow at Fujitsu Research Institute.

"The discussion about nationalizing or breaking up Tepco and at least putting the stabilization of the Fukushima reactors under direct government control is back."

Japanese officials also fear the glare of international attention could threaten Tokyo's bid to host the 2020 Olympics, a decision on which will be made by the International Olympics Committee on September 7 in Buenos Aires.

Japan's foreign ministry has begun issuing English language updates on the plant and the Tokyo Metropolitan Government now carries the latest radiation data on its website showing that radiation levels in the capital, some 230 km (140 miles) from Fukushima, are on par with or lower than London and New York.

GOVERNMENT INITIATIVE

Tepco said on the weekend that radiation near a tank holding highly contaminated water at the plant had spiked 18-fold, to a level that could kill an exposed person in four hours. It said no new leak had been detected at the tank, but another leak was found from a pipe connecting two other tanks.

Tepco, Japan's largest utility, last year got a 1 trillion yen ($10.2 billion) injection of tax money in exchange for giving the government a de facto controlling stake but management has been left to the company. The firm also gets public funds - in theory to be paid back - to help compensate residents forced to flee after the 2011 quake and tsunami triggered triple meltdowns at the plant.

The government has insisted that the utility should be responsible for the cost of decommissioning the reactors, a job expected to take decades and require as yet non-existent technologies, although the government has budgeted research and development funds - including an industry ministry request for a 40 percent boost to 12.5 billion yen in the budget for 2013/14.

The government has said it will unveil steps to address the huge accumulation of radioactive water at the plant soon.

Abe's cabinet is also likely to discuss this week funding for the Fukushima clean-up after a series of revelations about leaks of radioactive water at the coastal plant, Oshima said.

Steps under consideration would fall short of the liquidation called for by Tepco's harshest critics - including Hiroki Izumida, the governor of Niigata Prefecture, which hosts Tepco's mammoth Kashiwazaki Kariwa nuclear plant.

Such calls were rejected in the months after the March 2011 disaster, when authorities judged Tepco was too big to fail.

"First, the government should make a further commitment and make every effort under the current framework," Oshima said.

LDP Deputy Secretary General Koichi Haguida, a close aide to Abe, agreed liquidation was not in the cards but said the government must take the lead not just in dealing with the floods of water contaminated by the process of keeping the damaged reactors cool, but in decommissioning as well.

"Fukushima is a problem that must be separately resolved. So rather than leaving this solely to Tepco's responsibility, the government will take the initiative and get involved in dealing with the contaminated water and decommissioning to a significant extent," he told Reuters in an interview.

It is unclear whether more direct government involvement would open the door wider to foreign contractors.

U.S. firms such as Kurion and Shaw Group, a unit of Chicago Bridge & Iron Company, and EnergySolutions Inc have been engaged in water treatment at Fukushima, though a Reuters investigation in December found foreigners had won few, if any, contracts to develop technologies for scrapping the reactors.

DECOMMISSIONING AGENCY?

One option that has been floated is to create a new legal framework to give the Japanese government direct oversight at Fukushima, perhaps along the lines of Britain's National Decommissioning Authority, a public body charged with managing the dismantling of Britain's atomic power and research stations.

"I have said from way back that Japan should set up a decommissioning agency," Yasuhisa Shiozaki, the LDP's acting policy chief, said on a TV show last week.

Tepco said the utility welcomed the government's involvement in dealing with contaminated water but said it was hard to comment on any possible spin-off of the Fukushima operations.

"Either way, the company will continue to work with the government to thoroughly carry out decommissioning," company spokesman Yoshimi Hitotsugi said.

Taking on the Fukushima clean-up as a government project could be politically risky for Abe, who returned to power for a rare second term in December, since that would mean it could no longer lay the blame for missteps at Tepco's door.

Tepco's admission on July 22 - one day after Abe's LDP-led bloc won an upper house election - that contaminated water was leaking into the Pacific despite earlier denials, spurred the government to pledge to support efforts to stem the flow.

The intervention by the government at Fukushima comes at a time when Tepco's long-term sustainability remains in doubt.

The utility has aggressively cut costs and hiked electricity rates last year. But its failure to win local support for restarting its Kashiwazaki Kariwa nuclear plant has cost it an estimated $1 billion per month in added fuel costs.

"For Tepco to be reborn, it is imperative for the Kashiwazaki nuclear plant to start moving," said Osamu Goto, a director general for energy and environment policy at the industry ministry's Natural Resources and Energy Agency. "If this situation continues, they will have to raise rates again or we enter bankruptcy territory."

[Nordic]

If there was ever a crisis in the world that needed a massive international response, this is it.

This is bigger than Hitler.

Yet the PTB's are arguing over bombing a little country on the other side of the planet.

[crikkett]

If there was ever a crisis in the world that needed a massive international response, this is it.

This is bigger than Hitler.

Yet the PTB's are arguing over bombing a little country on the other side of the planet.

Yep, this is how the world ends. I'm sorry for the kids.

[smoking since 1879]

It's a lot worse than the MSM is saying... It's probably a good deal worse than Tepco are saying
Chernobyl was a pan fire by comparison.

Some reasoned opinions here :
http://www.fukuleaks.org/web/

Is this the ELE that the Mayans foresaw?


Peace

[seemslikeadream]

It's a lot worse than the MSM is saying... It's probably a good deal worse than Tepco are saying
Chernobyl was a pan fire by comparison.

Some reasoned opinions here :
http://www.fukuleaks.org/web/

Is this the ELE that the Mayans foresaw?


Peace

you know I think it is
On March 9, 2011 a 7.3 Magnitude Earthquake in Japan Triggered a Massive 8.9 Magnitude Earthquake/tsunami on March 11, 2011 in Tohoku, Japan

More leaks feared at Japan's Fukushima nuclear plant
By Jethro Mullen and Yoko Wakatsuki, CNN
updated 6:53 AM EDT, Mon September 2, 2013

Tokyo (CNN) -- The drip, drip, drip of bad news about Japan's tsunami-damaged nuclear power plant keeps going.
Several tanks and pipes at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi plant are suspected of leaking toxic water, the chairman of the Japanese nuclear watchdog, Shunichi Tanaka, said Monday.
Read more: Japan fed up with 'whack-a-mole' approach to Fukushima
His comments come after the much-criticized plant operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company, said over the weekend that it had detected a sharp spike in radiation levels in some of the pipes and huge containers that hold the vast quantities of contaminated water accumulating at the site.
How dangerous is Japan's nuclear leak? Fukushima plant 'house of horrors' How dangerous is Japan's nuclear leak?
That issue is the latest setback at the plant, where Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's government has vowed to step in to deal with the toxic water crisis that has deepened concerns in Japan and abroad about the daunting scale of the problem.
Since the massive earthquake and tsunami that hit northeastern Japan in March 2011 set off meltdowns at three of the reactors at the nuclear plant, TEPCO has been storing the enormous volumes of water contaminated at the site in a steadily growing collection of containers.
Some of the water tanks were constructed hastily as temporary storage units in the aftermath of the natural and nuclear disasters. Those makeshift containers are the ones where problems have arisen recently.
Checking problem areas
TEPCO said over the weekend that only a small amount of the highly contaminated water escaped from a tank this time around. But the disclosure comes just weeks after it admitted that about 300 tons of radioactive water leaked from another tank.
The latest leak doesn't appear to be as big as that, Tanaka said Monday, and it doesn't seem to have reached beyond the barriers that surround the rows of water tanks.
Read more: Man who battled Japan's nuclear meltdown dies
"Nevertheless, we are moving the contaminated water to other tanks and checking the bolts and seams of the tanks in order to be thorough," he said.
The tanks where the high radiation levels were detected are of the same design as the one that leaked heavily last month -- a crisis that prompted the nuclear regulator to declare it a Level 3 serious incident, its gravest assessment since the meltdowns at the plant in 2011.
TEPCO said it found high radiation readings at the storage tanks and pipe Saturday. The four locations are the bottom of three tanks and a pipe connecting tanks in a separate area.
The highest reading was 1,800 millisieverts per hour at the bottom fringe of the tank. Readings of 220 and 70 millisieverts per hour were measured at the bottom of other two tanks. And TEPCO said it found a dried stain under the pipe with 230 millisieverts per hour radiation measurement.
A person in an industrialized country is naturally exposed to 3 millisieverts a year. Experts say that after a single acute exposure of 1,000 millisieverts, people tend to start feeling nauseated and vomiting. Exposure at 5,000 millisieverts over the course of a few hours can be fatal.
One drop of liquid fell when a staff member pressed on insulation material around the pipe. But TEPCO said no contaminated water leak is expected, as there were no changes in the water levels in the tanks.
'Whack-a-mole'
The company, whose efforts to deal with the toxic water crisis were recently compared to a game of whack-a-mole by a government minister, said it was trying to determine the cause of the latest problem and promised to take measures to resolve it while ensuring worker safety.
But Tanaka seemed unimpressed by the company's handling of the problems at the plant.
"TEPCO has been dealing with these accidents in a stopgap manner, so I believe there must have been many things they have missed in their overall countermeasures," he said.
In July, TEPCO admitted that radioactive groundwater was leaking into the Pacific Ocean from the site, bypassing an underground barrier built to seal in the water.
Report: Fukushima's radiation damaged more souls than bodies
About 400 tons of groundwater flow into the site each day, and TEPCO also pumps large amounts of water through the buildings to keep the crippled reactors cool.
The Japanese government has pledged to come up with emergency measures to tackle the growing toxic water problem.
"A package of comprehensive countermeasures" will be presented at a ministerial meeting headed by the prime minister on Tuesday, the local news agency Kyodo reported Monday.
Dump it in the ocean?
One approach flagged by experts to deal with the massive volume of toxic water at the plant is to dump some or all of it into the Pacific Ocean.
"We might have to consider the option of discharging tainted water that is below regulatory levels into the ocean," Tanaka said Monday.
But he stressed that he would not allow the discharge of "tainted water that is above accepted levels."
Tanaka also warned that the toxic water is not the only big challenge at the site -- there's also the decommissioning of the reactors, which is likely to take 30 to 40 years.
"We have a long road ahead of us," he said.

[coffin_dodger]

Japan pledges $470m for Fukushima leaks BBC 3 September 2013

Japan is to invest hundreds of millions of dollars to stop leaks of radioactive water from the Fukushima nuclear plant.

Government spokesman Yoshihide Suga said an estimated 47bn yen ($473m, £304m) would be allocated to the project.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-23940214

here's a novel idea: how about you screw the 'cost' in funny-money generated with keystrokes and just fucking well sort it out?

[seemslikeadream]

Japan’s Nuclear Watchdog Sees Ocean Dump for Fukushima Water
By Jacob Adelman, Takashi Hirokawa & Yuriy Humber - Sep 2, 2013 3:38 AM CT

Tokyo Electric Power Co. (9501)’s plan to manage radioactive water at its wrecked Fukushima plant may include a controlled discharge into the ocean once its toxicity is brought within legal limits, Japan’s nuclear regulator said.
Nuclear Regulation Authority Chairman Shunichi Tanaka said today the ocean dump could be necessary as the country’s government prepares to present its plan for handling tainted water at the site that’s increasing by 400 tons a day.
Enlarge image
Members of Japan's Nuclear Regulation Authority inspect the Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear power plant in Fukushima, Japan, in this handout photograph taken on Aug. 23, 2013. Source: Nuclear Regulation Authority via Bloomberg
6:02
Aug. 23 (Bloomberg) -- Michael Friedlander, a nuclear engineer and former U.S. nuclear power plant operator, talks about the radioactive water leaking from Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s wrecked nuclear plant in Fukushima. He speaks with Zeb Eckert on Bloomberg Television's "First Up." (Source: Bloomberg)
8:50
July 8 (Bloomberg) -- Barbara Judge, the deputy chairmany of Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s Nuclear Reform Monitoring Committee, talks about her appointment, the company's efforts to comply to new safety standards, and the need for better public education on the advantages of nuclear power. She spoke with Bloomberg's Jacob Adelman in Tokyo on July 4. (Source: Bloomberg)
Managing the water used to cool melted fuel at the Fukushima plant’s reactors has become a fundamental challenge for the utility known as Tepco, which has struggled to contain a series of leaks including the loss of about 300 tons of contaminated water it reported two weeks ago.
“It is important for us to understand the need to make difficult judgments in order to avoid larger problems in the future,” Tanaka said of the possible ocean discharge during a speech to reporters in Tokyo.
Contaminant levels must be brought below accepted limits through filtration or other treatments before the water is discharged, he said.
Japan’s Nuclear Emergency Response Headquarters may present its response to the water management crisis as early as tomorrow, Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Katsunobu Kato said today, relaying comments made by Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga to lawmakers earlier.
‘Complete Package’
The government wants to present a “complete package” of steps to tackle the water problem, Suga said, according to Kato.
Tepco’s challenge was further illustrated yesterday when the utility said it had found a new radioactive leak, capping its worst month since the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami caused reactors to meltdown.
The company said it had halted the contaminated water leak from a pipe near an area of high radiation levels discovered on Aug. 31. Of the hot spots found over the weekend, one recorded radiation of 1,800 millisieverts per hour around the bottom of a bolted-flange tank storing water used to cool melted reactor cores. That’s 18 times the level reported at the same spot on Aug. 22, Tepco said.
The weekend’s findings probably reflect Tepco’s beefed-up monitoring crews finding contamination that was missed earlier, former nuclear engineer Michael Friedlander said in a phone interview.
Thrown Together
Tepco boosted the number of tank-inspection patrols from twice a day to three times a day after last month’s 300-ton leak, Yoshikazu Nagai, a company spokesman, said by phone. Patrols are increasing further to four times a day beginning today, when the number of inspection staff grows to 60 members from 10, he said.
The company also planned to install gauges on all of its tanks to monitor changes in water levels that suggest leaks, Nagai said. Those water level checks are currently done by measuring the temperature of the tanks’ outer walls, he said.
“They threw these tanks together, they’re exposed to the elements and now that they have more people looking at it with a higher degree of diligence, they’re finding leaks,” said Friedlander, who spent 13 years operating U.S. nuclear plants. “Those leaks have probably been around for quite some time and they’ve probably been growing because until now they haven’t been doing any work on them.”
Radiation Levels
Radiation levels Tepco disclosed at the weekend don’t raise an immediate concern for the general public because the site is off limits, Tetsuo Ito, head of Kinki University’s Atomic Energy Research Institute, said yesterday by telephone.
Direct exposure to 1,800 millisieverts for four hours can be lethal, but it’s not life-threatening for Tepco’s inspectors as they don’t stay in one spot for four hours, he said.
Tepco said the 1,800 millisieverts reading was found 5 centimeters above the area that was checked, falling to 15 millisieverts at 50 centimeters. The reading was for beta radiation that travels short distances and can be blocked by use of metal sheet such as aluminum, the company said on its website.
With more than 338,000 metric tons of water of varying levels of toxicity stored in pits, basements and hundreds of tanks at the Fukushima plant, Tepco has been overwhelmed in trying to contain leaks.
While the water stored in tanks has been treated to remove cesium, other radioactive elements such as strontium must be reduced before it can be discharged into the ocean, Tanaka said.
Corroded Filters
Tepco’s unit for filtering such contaminants, known as ALPS, was taken off line due to corrosion on Aug. 8, just months after beginning operation. Trade Minister Toshimitsu Motegi said last month that Tepco was being given until mid-September to restart the system.
“If we do decide to discharge into ocean, we will make every effort to ensure that contaminant levels are below the accepted limits,” Tanaka said. “One way to achieve it is to use the ALPS system, which does remove many radioactive elements.”
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe last month said Tepco isn’t able to handle the disaster recovery after the company acknowledged that contaminated groundwater at the plant was seeping into the ocean. Japanese government officials estimated that leak at 300 tons of irradiated water a day.

[seemslikeadream]

[quote]Published on Wednesday, September 4, 2013 by PBS News Hour
What if the Fukushima Ice Wall Defrosts? Looking at Risks of Japan's Experiment
The Japanese government is planning to build an ice wall around the damaged Fukushima nuclear plant to try to stop radioactive water leaks. Jeffrey Brown examines the risks and potential political fallout with Arjun Makhijani of the Institute for Energy and Environment Research and Kenji Kushida of Stanford University.

Looking at Risks if the Fukushima Ice Wall Defrosts

[seemslikeadream]

Fukushima Leak Is Far Worse Than Japan Is Letting On, Nuclear Experts Warn
Posted: 04/09/2013 15:03 BST | Updated: 04/09/2013 15:26 BST


Conflicting reports have left many baffled, and now nuclear experts have highlighted that no one really knows the true severity of the radioactive water leaks at Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan.

The crippled plant's operator, the Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco), has been desperately pumping water into the wrecked reactors to cool nuclear fuel that melted when the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami knocked out the plant's power and cooling systems.

The utility has built more than 1,000 tanks holding 335,000 tons of contaminated water at the plant, and the amount grows by 400 tonnes daily. Some tanks have sprung leaks, spilling contaminated water onto the ground.

The toxic water is being stored in temporary tanks at the site and last month Tepco admitted that 300 tonnes of highly radioactive water had leaked, in the most serious incident to date.


The nuclear incident in Japan has sparked concerns about the reliability of information
Mycle Schneider, an independent consultant who has previously advised the French and German governments, said the escalating situation is "far worse than we truly know."

"There are hundreds of issues at stake here," he told the Huffington Post UK.

"Whether it's temperature, radiation exposure, or the number of people exposed - all of these statistics are flawed. We don't know anything yet."

"This is far worse than what the general public are perceiving."

He blames the situation on the Japanese Government and Tepco who, he said, are refusing to accept the increasing severity of the issue.

"At the moment we are facing the challenge to conquer denial," he said. "This is simply organised denial.

"Japan's pride is certainly an issue here. But when you cross the line from pride to denial that's when something like this becomes truly dangerous."

"They are putting people in increased risk."

Japan's government announced on Wednesday it is to spend almost $500m (£320m) in an attempt to contain leaks and decontaminate highly toxic water at the devastated nuclear power plant.

The vast amount of money is set to be spent on a subterranean ice wall that would freeze the ground to a depth of up to 30 metres (100 feet) through a system of pipes carrying a coolant as cold as minus 40 degrees Celsius (minus 40 Fahrenheit).

This would theoretically block contaminated water from escaping from the facility's immediate surroundings, as well as keep underground water from entering the reactor and turbine buildings, where much of the radioactive water has collected.

However, the decision has widely been seen as an attempt to show that the nuclear accident won't be a safety concern just days before the International Olympic Committee chooses among Tokyo, Istanbul and Madrid as the host of the 2020 Olympics.

John Large, a Nuclear Engineer and Independent Nuclear Consultant, emphasised that the gross number of conflicting reports "flying around" are due to a reliance on just two sources of information – Tepco and the Japanese Government.

"This information is not only conflicted but also confused, and I fear, unreliable," he said.

"You have to wonder what their motives are."

The problem is, Mr Schneider added, is that nobody trusts TEPCO or the Japanese Government anymore.

"Can we blame the Japanese public for not trusting what these people are saying? They haven't exactly been trustworthy," he said.

"The ice wall project is an effort to come up with something that can be perceived as spectacular – they are throwing half a billion dollars into a futile project just days before the Olympic decision.

"But in practical terms, this is very questionable. It is not durable. This is not a sustainable situation and nobody knows if it will work. It's a panicked response."

The ice wall will be incredibly hard to maintain, experts said, pointing out that a simple power cut could "see the whole thing go up in smoke."

Mr Large said the new project is simply too risky to rely on, highlighting that the technique has only ever been used on a far smaller scale to control pollution before.

"They are building up a huge reservoir of radioactive material that will be free to circulate should this ice wall break down," he said.

"Ice walls tend to fracture and one of this scale has never even been tried before," he said.

Errors Cast Doubt on Japan’s Cleanup of Nuclear Accident Site

Tomas Munita for The New York Times

Inside Fukushima’s Evacuation Zone:

Accidents, miscalculations and delays have plagued the effort to clean up the site of the disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.
By MARTIN FACKLER
Published: September 3, 2013 204 Comments


NARAHA, Japan — 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.

Nearby, thousands of workers and a small fleet of cranes are preparing for one of the latest efforts to avoid a deepening environmental disaster that has China and other neighbors increasingly worried: removing spent fuel rods from the damaged No. 4 reactor building and storing them in a safer place.

The government announced Tuesday that it would spend $500 million on new steps to stabilize the plant, including an even bigger project: the construction of a frozen wall to block a flood of groundwater into the contaminated buildings. The government is taking control of the cleanup from the plant’s operator, the Tokyo Electric Power Company.

The triple meltdown at Fukushima in 2011 is already considered the world’s worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl. The new efforts, as risky and technically complex as they are expensive, were developed in response to a series of accidents, miscalculations and delays that have plagued the cleanup effort, making a mockery of the authorities’ early vows to “return the site to an empty field” and leading to the release of enormous quantities of contaminated water.

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.”

Problems at the plant seemed to take a sharp turn for the worse in July with the discovery of leaks of contaminated water into the Pacific Ocean. Two weeks ago, Tepco announced that 300 tons of water laced with radioactive strontium, a particle that can be absorbed into human bones, had drained from a faulty tank into the sea.

Contaminated water, used to cool fuel in the plant’s three damaged reactors to prevent them from overheating, will continue to be produced in huge quantities until the flow of groundwater into the buildings can be stopped — a prospect that is months or even years away. At the same time, delays and setbacks in the enormous effort to clean up the countryside are further undermining confidence in the government’s ability to deliver on its promises and eroding the public’s faith in nuclear power.

Officials and proponents of the cleanup say difficulties are inevitable given the monumental scale of the problems. But a growing number of critics say the troubles are at least partly a result of fundamental flaws in the current cleanup, and they wondered whether Tuesday’s announcement might have been made with an eye to the International Olympic Committee, which will decide shortly on the site of the 2020 Summer Games.

The cleanup efforts to date, critics said, were grandiose but ultimately ill-conceived public works projects begun as a knee-jerk reaction by the government’s powerful central ministries to deflect public criticism and to protect the clubby and insular nuclear power industry from oversight by outsiders.

The biggest public criticism has involved the government’s decision to leave the cleanup in the hands of Tepco, which has seemed incapable of getting the plant fully under control. Each step Tepco has taken seems only to produce new problems. The recent leaking tank was one of hundreds that have been hastily built to hold the 430,000 tons of contaminated water at the plant, and the amount of that water increases at a rate of 400 tons per day. On Wednesday, nuclear regulators said radiation levels at other spots near the tanks had risen, suggesting the possibility of other, still undetected, leaks.

Critics complain that the government-run committee that has overseen Tepco’s cleanup is loaded with nuclear industry insiders and overseen by the trade minister, Toshimitsu Motegi, whose ministry is in charge of promoting nuclear power. They say Japan may be able to come up with better, more sustainable plans if it opens the process to outsiders like Japanese nonnuclear companies and foreigners.

As the government takes a more direct hand in the cleanup, Mr. Motegi has acknowledged that the old approach is working poorly, if at all. “The response to the contaminated water problem has been left to Tepco, and has ended up looking like a game of whack-a-mole,” he told reporters on Monday.

Mr. Motegi’s ministry will now take charge of the plant’s cleanup. This will include the plan to stop the influx of groundwater into the reactor buildings by sealing them off behind a mile-long subterranean wall of ground frozen by liquid coolant.

Some critics have dismissed the “ice wall” as a costly technology that would be vulnerable at the blackout-prone plant because it relies on electricity the way a freezer does, and even more so because it has never been tried on the vast scale that Japan is envisioning and was always considered a temporary measure, while at Fukushima it would have to endure possibly for decades.

But industry experts said the technology had been used frequently to stabilize ground in big construction projects, like the Big Dig highway project in Boston.

Nuclear experts also questioned the government’s longer-term plan to extract the fuel cores from the reactors, which if successful would eliminate the major source of contamination. Some doubted whether it was even technically feasible to extricate the fuel because of the extent of the damage during the explosions and subsequent meltdowns.

Even at Three Mile Island, where the reactor vessel remained intact, removing the fuel by remote-controlled machinery was a tricky engineering feat. While great strides have been made in robotics since then, damage to the containment vessels at Fukushima makes the problems there much more complex.

Molten fuel not only piled up like wax from a candle on the vessel floor, as at Three Mile Island, but ran through cracks into the piping and machinery below. Some experts warn that it may even have found its way into the ground beneath the buildings.

Scientists have played down the current threat from contaminated water, saying the new leaks are producing small increases in radioactivity in the Fukushima harbor that remain far lower than immediately after the March 2011 crisis.

“This continued leakage is not the scale of what we had originally,” said Ken O. Buesseler, a scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution on Cape Cod who has long studied the disaster. “But it’s persistent.”

Perhaps the principal threat of the radioactive water is to the Japanese government, which after all the missteps cannot afford to look feckless before a citizenry that is already distrustful of its pronouncements and dubious about nuclear energy.

In view of that, some experts dismiss the current cleanup plans as just a way of defending the status quo by convincing the public that the damage can be undone, and that more drastic steps, like paying more compensation to displaced residents or permanently shutting the nation’s other nuclear power plants, are unnecessary.

“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.

“If we just buried the reactors, no one would want to see the face of another nuclear power plant for years,” said Shunsuke Kondo, chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, an advisory body in the Cabinet Office.

Unease about the worsening situation is evident among the residents of evacuated communities like Naraha. The cleanup here has gone more quickly than in other evacuated towns, with most decontamination expected to be finished sometime next year. Even so, town officials said that when they asked Naraha’s 7,600 residents whether they would move back, most said they would refuse as long as the plant remained in its current unstable state.

“Every three days, there seems to be a new problem up there,” said Yukiei Matsumoto, the mayor of Naraha, whose town hall is now housed in a conference center at a university just outside the 12-mile-radius evacuation zone. “The longer this continues, the more distant the townspeople feel from Tepco and the national government.”

[seemslikeadream]

Fukushima Open Air Fission? Radiation Surge Can’t Be Blamed Just On Random Leaks
By Christopher Busby

Source: Russia TodayThursday, September 05, 2013

The latest surge in radiation at Fukushima nuclear plant may suggest not only additional water leaks at the site, but could also mean fission is occurring outside the crippled reactor, explains Chris Busby from the European Committee on Radiation Risk.

The increase in radiation reading is too significant to be blamed on random water leaks, believes Busby.

RT: Just how serious is the situation now in Japan?

Chris Busby: I think this is an indication that it has actually deteriorated significantly, very suddenly in the last week. What they are not saying and what is the missing piece of evidence here is that radiation suddenly cannot increase unless something happens and that something cannot be leakage from a tank, because gamma radiation goes straight through a tank. The tank has got very thin metal walls. These walls will only attenuate gamma radiation by 5 per cent, even when it is 1 cm thick.

Although they may think this is a leak from the tank, and there may well be leaks from the tank, this sudden increase of 1.8 Sieverts per hour is an enormously big doze that can probably kill somebody in 2 to 4 hours.

Today there was another leak found at 1.7 Sieverts per hour in more or less the same place. This huge radiation increase, in my mind means something going on outside the tanks, some radioactive fission is occurring, like an open air reactor, if you like, under the ground.

RT: What impact will this have on the clean-up operation and those who are involved in that operation?

CB: First of all it is clearly out of control and secondly no one can go anywhere near it. Nobody can go in to measure where these leaks are or do anything about them, because anybody who is to approach that sort of area would be dead quite quickly. They would be seriously harmed.

RT: Then presumably, someone who was there earlier, not knowing that the radiation levels were so high, are at risk now?

CB: I think many people are going to die as a result of this just like liquidators died after Chernobyl. They were dying over the next ten years or so.

RT: Why has TEPCO failed to contain the radiation?

CB: I think no one has actually realized how bad this is, because the international nuclear industries have tried to play it down so much, that they sort of came to the idea that somehow it can be controlled. Whereas all along, it could never be controlled.

I’ve seen a photograph taken from the air recently, in which the water in the Pacific Ocean is actually appearing to boil. Well, it is not boiling. You can see that it’s hot. Steam is coming off the surface. There is a fog condensing over the area of the ocean close to the reactors, which means that hot water is getting into the Pacific that means something is fissioning very close to the Pacific and it is not inside the reactors, it must be outside the reactors in my opinion.

RT: Surely international nuclear industry should have come to TEPCO’s help before this?

CB: Yes. They should have done that. This is not a local affair. This is an international affair. I could not say why it has not. I think they are all hoping that nothing will happen, hoping that this will all go away and keeping their fingers crossed. But from the beginning it was quite clear that it was very serious and that there is no way in which this going not going to go very bad.

And now it seems to have suddenly got very bad. If that photograph I’ve seen is true, they should start evacuating people up to a 100 kilometer zone.

RT: So not only those that live in the vicinity but also those that live within 100 km could be at risk?

CB: I say that this might be a faked dubbed photograph, but if that is real and these levels of 1.8 Sieverts per hour are real, than something is very serious has happened and I think people should start to get away.

RT: Since the radiation is leaking into the ocean, will it not have a major ecological impact elsewhere?

CB: Of course. What happens there is that it moves all the radioactivity up and down the coast right down to Tokyo. I’ve seen a statement made by Tokyo’s mayor saying this will not affect the application of Tokyo to be considered for the Olympic Games. I actually thought they ought to consider evacuating Tokyo. It is very, very serious.

Christopher Busby is an expert on the health effects of ionizing radiation and Scientific Secretary of the European Committee on Radiation Risk.

[seemslikeadream]

Japan blasts French magazine for nuclear-related Olympic satireEnglish.news.cn 2013-09-12 20:43:28

TOKYO, Sept. 12 (Xinhua) -- The Japanese government said Thursday it will lodge a formal complaint about a cartoon published in a French weekly newspaper depicting sumo wrestlers with extra limbs in front of the Fukushima nuclear power plant.

Government officials said the satirical caricature was " tasteless" and seemingly taking aim at the decision to grant Tokyo the rights to host the 2020 Summer Olympics amid an ongoing nuclear crisis at the Fukushima complex located 150 km northeast of the capital city.

The cartoon, carried in Le Canard Enchaine, a newspaper known for its satirical take on topical issues, shows two emaciated sumo wrestlers -- one with three legs, the other with three arms -- facing off in a bout with the Fukushima plant in the background.

In the cartoon a sports announcer states: "Marvelous! Thanks to Fukushima, sumo is now an Olympic sport."

"The report was inappropriate. It is extremely regrettable," Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told a press conference, adding "this cartoon hurts the feelings of those who suffered through the Great East Japan Earthquake."

In March 2011, an earthquake-triggered tsunami ravaged Japan's northeast and sparked the world's worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl in 1986 in the Fukushima nuclear plant.

"It is inappropriate and gives a wrong impression of the Fukushima contaminated water issue," Suga added.

Another cartoon comprising a spread in the same French publication shows two people in front of a pool wearing anti- radiation suits and holding geiger counters. The cartoon is captioned: "There is already a pool in Fukushima for the Olympics, " -- a reference either to the spent nuclear fuel pools, or pools of contaminated water leaking at the plant.

Suga said Japan would lodge its complaint with Le Canard Enchaine through the French embassy in Tokyo and that the Foreign Ministry had been directed to "thoroughly explain the situation" to avoid similar incidents.

The satirical cartoons from France come at a time when the global spotlight is firmly trained on Japan following the International Olympic Committee (IOC) awarding Tokyo with the Summer Olympics in 2020, ahead of rival cities Istanbul and Madrid.

The IOC's decision, made on Sept. 7, favored Tokyo in part because of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's assurances that the Fukushima crisis has not and will not affect Tokyo and that the Games were in "safe hands."

However, Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) operator of the crippled nuclear complex said this week that there are possibly two leaks in tanks storing highly-radioactive water at the facility, with the second leak causing radiation levels to spike from 650 becquerels per liter found near the first leak, to 3,200 becquerels per liter of radioactive substances detected at a trench near the second leak.

[coffin_dodger]

A question that has been bugging me for a few weeks now -

The World knows that Fukushima is a big problem. It has been repeatedly reported that TEPCO is not in control of the situation for many months. The World appears to have stood idly by (in relative terms) as the problems mount and the cries from Japan become more desperate. This is a problem that could potentially have Worldwide repercussions - not least of which would be a major pollution of the West coast of America, and if left unattended, the rest of the World.

So why aren't teams of experts/equipment/technologies from all over the world there, right now, sorting this out?

It has occured to me that maybe there is no one that can sort it out.

Fukushima "not under control", says TEPCO official
POSTED: 13 Sep 2013 7:27 PM

http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/asi ... 12662.html

[Joao]

So why aren't teams of experts/equipment/technologies from all over the world there, right now, sorting this out?

The French energy company Areva is part of the current effort, but I agree that the overall lack of (apparent) international involvement is baffling. And now with the 2020 Olympics having been selected for Tokyo, it increasingly seems that PR is the only piece being coordinated with any effectiveness.

Small damn potatoes but, for the record, I was told that PG&E sent a bunch of borated water (used in the "spent" fuel pools to inhibit spontaneous chain reactions) shortly after the tsunami. Presumably(!) other organizations are helping in their own small ways, as well, but whatever's being done hardly seems sufficient. As a Californian, I'm worried about what's drifting over here and landing on our crops. I guess we'll have a better idea in 20 years or so, assuming the whole thing doesn't get (more) catastrophic in the meantime... Fucking mad science.