Fukushima - mainstream coverage

Fukushima Anti-Radiation Fence Has Hole In It, TEPCO Says

Workers at Japan's crippled Fukushima nuclear plant Thursday spotted a hole in one of the barriers intended to keep radioactive particles contained in the harbour, the operator said.

Huffington Post,

26 September, 2013

Tokyo Electric Power set up silt fences in the harbour next to the plant, including one covering each outlet at reactor units 1-4, which were damaged in the 2011 tsunami, and another on the egress of reactors 5-6 which remain intact.

A silt fence is a device to trap sediment before water flows into the sea.

The fence around the undamaged reactors was found to be holed, a TEPCO spokesman said.

"Radiation levels in this area's seawater are very low, and no contaminated water tanks are placed near reactors 5-6," he said.

The monster tsunami swamped the six-reactor nuclear plant on March 11, 2011, knocking out cooling systems and sending units 1-3 into meltdown. Explosions and a fire destroyed the building of unit 4.

Reactors 5-6 are located a short distance from the crippled units.

Radioactive contamination of the sea has emerged as one of the major concerns after the nuclear accident, with TEPCO using thousands of tonnes of water to tame the reactors and keep them cool.

The utility says they are now stable but need more water every day to keep them cool and to prevent them running out of control again.

Much of that now-contaminated water is being stored in temporary tanks at the plant, and TEPCO has so far revealed no clear plan for its disposal. Some of the tanks have sprung leaks.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe insisted at a meeting of Olympic chiefs this month that adverse effects from contamination were limited to the 0.3-square-kilometre harbour.

His reassurances, given at the meeting of the International Olympic Committee in Buenos Aires, were seen as key to Tokyo's successful bid to host the 2020 Olympic Games.

_{Fukushima Disaster Reaches Epic Proportions}

_{Within as few as 60 days, Tepco will begin trying to remove more than 1500 spent fuel rods from a badly damaged area of the nuclear reactor.}

_{Nation of Change,}

_{26 September, 2013}

_{Consuming cesium-tainted fish is probably about to be one of your least concerns. Most of us were already aware of the generalities of Fukushima’s defunct nuclear reactor seeping tons of toxic and radioactive iodone, cesium, and strontium-89 and 90 into the Pacific Ocean. We perhaps said a prayer and vowed to start consuming fish from other oceans. Now, there is news of Fukushima’s damaged Unit 4 pool, that a Yale professor warns “is in perilous danger and could threaten all of humanity for thousands of years.”}

This is one of the biggest crises we’ve faced as a human race, as some have put it, since the disarming of the Soviet Union or the Cuban Missile Crisis. We need every activist to call for immediate action and all resources to be provided to the Fukushima plant without further finger pointing at the plant’s owner, Tokyo Electric (Tepco) in order for this calamity to be averted.

Within as few as 60 days, Tepco will begin trying to remove more than 1500 spent fuel rods from a badly damaged area of the nuclear reactor:

“[...] Much more serious is the danger that the spent fuel rod pool at the top of the nuclear plant number four will collapse in a storm or an earthquake, or in a failed attempt to carefully remove each of the 1,535 rods and safely transport them to the common storage pool 50 meters away. Conditions in the unit 4 pool, 100 feet from the ground, are perilous, and if any two of the rods touch it could cause a nuclear reaction that would be uncontrollable. The radiation emitted from all these rods, if they are not continually cool and kept separate, would require the evacuation of surrounding areas including Tokyo. Because of the radiation at the site the 6,375 rods in the common storage pool could not be continuously cooled; they would fission and all of humanity will be threatened, for thousands of years.”

Tepco has alluded to the fact that they don’t have the resources or expertise to try to remove these fuel rods safely, even though early on they tried to downplay the seriousness of the Fukushima event. The company already faces bankruptcy, but there is a much larger matter at hand. If the rods are not removed properly, more than 400 tons of fuel in that pool could spew out more than 15,000 times the radiation that was released at Hiroshima. We can’t leave this to Tepco and the Japanese government to handle. It is no longer a ‘foreign’ issue, but a worldwide concern to be taken extremely seriously.

Forget about just eating irradiated fish in California, or having to give up your favorite sushi joint, Tepco is playing with the devil’s fire now. There are three other mutilated reactors that have to be kept cool. The company continues to pour more water, which becomes toxic with radiation as it pours through the reactor cores. Steam plumes seen on site may even indicate that the process of nuclear fission is still taking place underground. No one even really knows where the cores are located. That irradiated water has already been pouring into some very fragile tanks to keep it from further spewing into the Pacific Ocean, and many scientists say that were this water to be leaked, it would not disperse fast enough to remain ‘safe’ for ocean life, and have nearly cataclysmic affects for the world at large.

Furthermore, the water currently swishing through the site, like so much washing-machine waste is undermining the overall structural integrity of the units, including Unit 4. Just a few meters from Unit 4, now sit more than 6000 fuel assemblies in a common pool. It has no containment and is completely vulnerable, is there was a small earthquake or a tiny tsunami, or the current rods were extracted without meticulous care, then we could expect nuclear fall out like we’ve never seen on this planet.

“According to long-time expert and former Department of Energy official Robert Alvarez, there is more than 85 times as much lethal cesium on site as was released at Chernobyl.”

Arnie Gunderson, a nuclear engineer with more than 40 years of experience in the field says that the fuel rods are possibly damaged, bent and crumbling beyond repair. Nonetheless, the safe removal of those fuel rods is the  most immediate concern. It won’t just be children in Japan suffering from thyroid disease and radiation poisoning otherwise. If you know scientists in this field who might be able to help, or you can urge your president or politicians to support this cause, please do so. Time is, quite literally, of the essence.

TEPCO 'finds crack' in Fukushima’s water tank after huge sea leak

_{Workers from Japan’s TEPCO Fukushima Daiichi plant have located a crack in the bottom of a tank that may have leaked 300 tons of radioactive water in August, Japanese media reports. This comes as the company seeks to reopen another nuclear plant}

RT,

26 September, 2013

_{The water that was being pumped into the tank at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant could have caused the existing gap to expand and likely led to the massive leak, TV channel NHK reported. The leak which sparked the crisis came from one of the 1,000 above-ground storage tanks built inside the plant by Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO). The company promised to continue their investigations.}

_{Moreover, silt fences intended to prevent soil containing radioactive substances from slipping into the ocean were found to be damaged on Thursday. The damage was found close to the buildings of the fifth and sixth units, NHK reported. Both were on cold shutdown for planned maintenance, thereby managing to avoid meltdowns.}

_{A TEPCO spokesman said that the area was not a danger zone. “Radiation levels in this area's seawater are very low, and no contaminated water tanks are placed near reactors 5 and 6,” he told AFP.}

_{The fence is also designed to prevent radioactive material emerging from damaged units 1, 2, 3 and 4, where another separate fence is set up. It was damaged in April by rough waves and bad weather.}

_{AFP Photo / Japan PoolAFP Photo / Japan Pool}

_{All of Japan’s 50 nuclear reactors were shut down following the 2011 earthquake and tsunami which wreaked havoc at Fukushima and sparked a nuclear crisis in which meltdowns occurred in three reactors. It was considered to be the world’s worst nuclear accident since the Chernobyl disaster in 1986.}

_{Following the devastation, the public outcry over the persistent usage of nuclear power in Japan has prompted protests, drawing thousands in some cases.}

_{Some rallies have drawn links and comparisons to the nuclear bombs at Hisoshima and Nagasaki, dropped by the US on Japan in 1945, at the end of World War II. These have been dismissed by officials as distasteful, and perhaps even histrionic.}

_{“Our position, and this is a position we can never compromise on, is that nuclear weapons are an absolute evil,” Hiroshima Mayor Kazumi Matsui said in an impassioned interview with AP at City Hall. “I oppose connecting the two, simply because they both involve radiation.”}

_{The Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs killed some 140,000 people, and while nobody has yet been known to die from exposure to the Fukushima radiation, the disaster, which involved a massive earthquake and tsunami, caused the deaths of nearly 20,000 people.}

_{Additionally, the long-term health toll is yet to be seen. The Japanese government has already detected 44 confirmed and suspected cases of thyroid cancer among 217,000 children (aged 18 and under) who have been checked in Fukushima.}

_{Despite the protests and opposition, there are still plans in place to restart plants.}

_{Protesters hold banners during a protest rally against nuclear power plants, following the March 2011 Fukushima meltdown-disasters, in Tokyo on June 2, 2013. (AFP Photo / Rie Ishii)Protesters hold banners during a protest rally against nuclear power plants, following the March 2011 Fukushima meltdown-disasters, in Tokyo on June 2, 2013. (AFP Photo / Rie Ishii)}

_{On Thursday, TEPCO received approval to restart the Kashiwazaki Kariwa plant in the western Niigata prefecture, which has been central to the company’s turnaround plans following the Fukushima disaster in 2011.}

_{The governor of the prefecture said that he was allowing the utility to apply for safety approval, despite previous statements declaring that TEPCO was not fit to run a nuclear plant.}

_{“The Kashiwazaki Kariwa nuclear power plant may be halted but it is a living facility, and safety must be ensured at the plant,” Governor Hirohiko Izumida said in a statement faxed to Reuters. It was released a day after a well-publicized appeal from the president of TEPCO.}

_{However, the final judgment on whether getting the plant will be back up and running again is still being withheld.}

_{Prime Minister Shinzo Abe returned to power last year, and is a firm proponent of nuclear power. It is thought that under his watch, idled reactors may be restarted again. However, TEPCO itself is behind schedule with its own plans, and since the disaster has had to deal with the knowledge that radioactive water has been leaking into the Pacific Ocean ever since the accident.}

_{Abe has told TEPCO to outline a timeframe for handling the leaks. TEPCO is currently preparing to test a new filtration system, beginning Friday. The company’s plans to install more efficient cleaners have been challenged by the NHK channel.}

_{While the company would like to increase capacity for cleaning from 500 tons of water per day to 1,500 tons per day, the system is apparently not capable of removing radioactive tritium from contaminated water.}

Can you imagine! Make people ill to maintain calm.

Fukushima Prefecture resumes selling seafood products to local markets

JDP,

26 September, 2013

Fish and other marine products are now available at local shops inFukushima Prefecture as offshore test-fishing was shown to be safe from contamination by the local fisheries cooperative. The test was made on Wednesday while selling of the marine products resumed early Thursday.

Although there are doubts on food safety as Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) continues to report leaks of radioactive water, the local fisheries cooperative was determined to prove that seafood products in the region are safe from radioactive contamination. Based on the cooperative’s test on 100 fish, only five showed traces of radioactive materials, but each was less than a tenth of the government’s limit, which is 100 becquerels. With such results, the prefecture’s Matsukawa Port in Soma saw fishermen and wholesalers seeking marine products early Thursday.

Some of the seafood and other products also made their way to shops in the city of Soma. Customers who braved purchasing products from the Fukushima waters were satisfied with the test certificates attached to the packages. One of the customers was a 79-year old who preferred local products. He said that he does so because they are fresh and have gone through tests to guarantee safe consumption. Seafood products from Fukushima will be sold in Sendai in Miyagi Prefecture on Friday whileTokyo will have them sold the following day.