You
Won’t BELIEVE What’s Going On at Fukushima Right Now
Tepco
Has No Idea How to Stabilize the Reactors
1
August, 2013
You’ve
heard bad news about Fukushima recently.
But
it’s worse
than you know.
The
Wall Street Journal notes that radiation levels outside
the plant are likely
higher than inside the reactor:
NRA
[Nuclear Regulation Authority] officials said highly contaminated
water may be leaking into the soil from a number of trenches,
allowing the water to seep into the site’s groundwater and
eventually into the ocean.
***
Both
radioactive substances are considered harmful to health. An NRA
official said Monday that the very high levels were likely
to be even higher than those within the reactor units themselves.
***
It
was by far the highest concentration of radioactivity detected since
soon after Japan’s March 2011 earthquake and tsunami ….
How
could it be more radioactive outside
the nuclear reactors? The reactors have lost
containment,
and experts have
no idea where the nuclear cores are.
And
the problems which have been detected at ground-level are only the
tip of the iceberg. Japan Times points
out:
Cesium
levels in water under Fukushima No. 1 plant soar the deeper it gets,
Tepco reveals
***
Tepco
found 950 million becquerels of cesium and 520 million becquerels of
beta ray-emitting radioactive substances, including strontium, in the
water from 13 meters [~43 feet] underground.
Water
from 1 meter down contained 340 million becquerels, and a sample from
7 meters down contained 350 million becquerels.
***
Cesium,
a metallic element, is subject to gravity.
Yomiuri
reports that highly-radioactive
groundwater could start coming to the surface
at the Fukushima plant:
TEPCO
spokesman Noriyuki Imaizumi revealed the water level of the tainted
groundwater in a test well located on the sea side of the No. 2
reactor has risen rapidly.
“If
the water level continues to rise, it could reach the ground
surface,”
Imaizumi, an acting general manager of the company’s nuclear
power-related division, said at a press conference Monday.
According
to the company, the water level has risen about 70 centimeters over
the past 20 days.
***
To
prevent contaminated groundwater from leaking into the sea, TEPCO is
working to reinforce the ground foundation of seawalls. The rising
water level in the test well means the measures to prevent leakage
have been working.
However,
the company apparently
failed to give much thought to the fact that the groundwater would
have nowhere else to go
….
[Tepco]
learnt on Wednesday that its efforts to prevent radiation-tainted
groundwater from seeping into the sea are failing.
***
TEPCO
has been trying to solidify the embankment of the crippled power
plant.
***
TEPCO
says water levels in one of the contaminated wells have risen by
about 1 meter since the work began in early July.
It
says this is likely the
result of its work to solidify the ground [to a depth of 16
meters], using chemicals.
The
company says soil up to 2 meters below the ground cannot be hardened,
and water may be seeping out.
In
addition, a top expert says that radioactive water could be flowing
beneath
the seafloor … and could well up outside of the port “containment”
zone:
Atsunao
Marui, head of the Groundwater Research Group at the National
Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, said,
“Groundwater also flows beneath the seafloor, so it’s possible
that contaminated groundwater could
spring up outside the port.”
Marui
added that water outside the port also needs to be carefully checked.
Reuters
notes
that the bolts in Fukushima’s tanks will corrode in just a few
years, and a plant workers reveal — “Tepco says it doesn’t know
how long tanks will hold”:
Experts
say Tepco is attempting the most ambitious nuclear clean-up in
history, even greater than the Chernobyl disaster ….
***
Radioactive
water that cools the reactors …]mixes with some 400 tonnes of fresh
groundwater pouring into the plant daily.
Workers
have built more than 1,000 tanks ….
With
more than 85 percent of the 380,000 tonnes of storage capacity
filled, Tepco has said it could run out of space.
The
tanks are built from
parts of disassembled old containers brought from defunct factories
and put together with new parts, workers from the plant told Reuters.
They say steel bolts in
the tanks will corrode in a few years.
Tepco
says it does not know how long the tanks will hold.
[Tepco's]
appallingly shoddy handling of radioactive water that is leaking from
the crippled plant into the sea.
***
At
the No. 3 reactor, highly radioactive “mystery
steam”
has been spotted.
The
fact that radioactive substances are still being released into the
ground, the sea and the air is irrefutable proof that the nuclear
disaster of March 2011 is not over. The responsible parties must take
this situation gravely
….
The
utility’s glaring ineptitude with crisis management was noted right
from the start of the Fukushima disaster.
***
We
have zero faith in the utility’s reliability as an operator of any
nuclear power plant.
In fact, allowing the company to handle nuclear energy is simply out
of the question.
The
entire company now needs to be focused on preventing radioactive
substances from escaping into the environment.
Yomiuri
argues that the government agency overseeing Fukushima has no idea
what’s going on:
The
Nuclear Regulation Authority, which oversees safety management at the
nuclear plant, decided to set up a working team to analyze conditions
concerning contamination.
But
the NRA’s actions have also been badly delayed. At a meeting
Monday, an expert said the NRA “still
can’t grasp the risks posed by the current situation.”
In
case one hasn’t paid attention the constant stream of international
experts who have called for TEPCO to be removed as the
organization in charge of decommissioning the crippled Fukushima
Daiichi reactors, Shunichi Tanaka, chairman
of Japan’s Nuclear Regulation Authority has
also called for Tokyo Electric to be removed.
“It is simply too big for one company to handle,” said Tanaka, at
a press conference Wednesday. “Placing all the burden (of
controlling the site) on them won’t solve the problem.”
Remember,
an official Japanese government investigation concluded that the
Fukushima accident was a “man-made”
disaster, caused by “collusion” between government and
Tepco and bad reactor design.
And yet the Japanese government has allowed the culprit – Tepco –
to oversee the “cleanup”, in
the same way that the U.S. government allowed BP to oversee the
“cleanup”
of the Gulf oil spill even though BP’s criminal negligence caused
the spill in the first place.
It’s
taken about two-and-a-half years, but it seems the Japanese
government is finally losing patience with the operator of the
Fukushima nuclear plant.
The reason: its haphazard approach to stabilising the complex. Last
week it was unexplained steam rising from the shattered remains of
the building housing the melted reactor number three. This week it’s
TEPCO’s admission that radioactive water from the plant has
probably been leaking into the Pacific for the last three months.
The
operator of the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant sat on
its hands for more than two years despite having pledged to seal a
leaking hole in a turbine building ….
[Chief
Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide] Suga told reporters after the Cabinet
meeting on Tuesday that the government views this as a grave matter.
Foreign
nuclear experts on Friday blasted the operator of Japan’s crippled
Fukushima nuclear plant, with one saying its lack of transparency
over toxic water leaks showed “you
don’t know what you’re doing”…
“appears that you are not keeping the people of Japan informed.
These actions indicate that you don’t know what you are doing …
you do not have a plan
and that you are not doing all you can to protect the environment and
the people.” [said Dale Klein, Former NRC
Chairman
and Tepco advisory committee member]
Nuclear
expert – and former high-level nuclear industry executive – Arnie
Gundersen says that Fukushima has “contaminated
the biggest body of water on the planet”, and that the whole
Pacific Ocean likely to have cesium levels 5-10 times higher than at
peak of nuclear bomb tests.
How
could this happen? Doesn’t the ocean dilute radiation
to the point it is rendered harmless? No, actually:
A
previously-secret government report concluded in 1955 that the
ocean may
not adequately dilute radiation from nuclear accidents
Scientists
say that radiation on the West Coast of North America could end up
being 10
times higher than in Japan
The
amount of radioactive fuel at Fukushima dwarfs
the amount at Chernobyl
Fukushima
… seems to lurch from
one problem to the next
….
***
When
the situation is so bad that Shunichi Tanaka, the NRA chairman,
is stating in a press conference, with regard to water leaks, that
“if you have any
better ideas, we’d like to know,”
it should be clear that Fukushima No. 1 still requires the upmost
attention.
Considering
the state of the plant, it’s
difficult to find a solution today or
tomorrow…
That’s probably not satisfactory to many of you. But that’s the
reality we face after an accident like this… We
don’t truly know whether that will work….
Indeed,
technology
doesn’t currently even exist to stabilize and clean up Fukushima,
and Tepco – with no
financial incentive
to actually fix things – has only been pretending
to clean it up. And see
this.
Iori
Mochizuki
39,000,000,000
Bq/m3 of Cs-134/137 measured from reactor3 seawater trench shaft
1
August, 2013
According
to Tepco, significantly high level of radioactive material was
detected from reactor3 trench shaft too.
The
location is on the sea side of reactor3. It’s the shaft connected
to the seawater trench.
(1m
depth under contaminated water)
Cs-134
: 13,000,000,000 Bq/m3
Cs-137
: 26,000,000,000 Bq/m3
All
β : 32,000,000,000 Bq/m3
Chloride
concentration : 16,000 ppm
Generally
the radioactive density is lower than reactor2 trench shaft. On the
other hand, the chloride concentration is over double as reactor2. It
suggests the retained contaminated waster is already being exchanged
with seawater.
↓ Location
of the issued trench (Red circled)
Cesium
levels in water under Fukushima No. 1 plant soar the deeper it gets,
Tepco reveals
Tokyo
Electric Power Co. said Thursday it has detected high levels of
radioactive cesium in water taken from deep under its disaster-hit
Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant
1
August, 2013
Tepco found
that water in a hole dug for a cable pipe contained up to 950 million
becquerels of cesium per liter.
The pipe is
located near another at the turbine building of reactor 2, where
water has been found to contain high levels of radioactive
substances.
Tepco said
it believes this water was among the first contaminated in the early
stages of the March 2011 meltdowns.
Studying
water taken from 1 meter, 7 meters and 13 meters underground at a
point some 65 meters from the Pacific, Tepco found 950 million
becquerels of cesium and 520 million becquerels of beta ray-emitting
radioactive substances, including strontium, in the water from 13
meters underground.
Water from
1 meter down contained 340 million becquerels, and a sample from 7
meters down contained 350 million becquerels.
Salt
concentrations in water from 13 meters down were more than 10 times
higher than water from 1 meter and 7 meters underground.
On July 26,
Tepco detected 2.35 billion becquerels of cesium in water collected
from a different cable trench closer to the ocean. Cesium, a metallic
element, is subject to gravity.
It has
already been widely reported that highly radioactive groundwater from
under the plant had been flowing to the Pacific and that test wells
dug near the shore showed water levels in the wells rose and fell
with the tides, revelations Tepco has been criticized for being late
to report
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