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Nuclear
Expert: Fukushima “like the worst nightmare becoming reality”
- Released as much as 1,000 atomic bombs worth of radioactive material
- “Everyone on earth has been exposed… an increase in cancer will be the result”
11
March, 2016
Interview
with nuclear engineer Hiroaki Koide
(translation by Prof. Robert Stolz, transcription by Akiko Anson),
published Mar 8, 2016 (emphasis dded):
As
for the scale of the [Fukushima] accident… we simply don’t know…
all the measuring equipment was destroyed at the time of the
accident…
The
Japanese government has reported estimates [of] 1.5×10^16 Becquerels
of Cs-137, which would make it a release of 168 times more
radioactive material than the Hiroshima bombing. And this is only
material released into the atmosphere…
But
I myself think the government’s numbers are an underestimate.
Various experts and institutes from around the world have offered
several of their own estimates… some two or three times higher than
the government’s numbers. According to these other estimates I
think that the release of Cs-137 into the atmosphere could be around
500 times the Hiroshima bombing.
What
has been washed into the sea… is likely not much different from the
levels released into the atmosphere. Even today we are unable to
prevent this release. And so if
we combine the amount of Cs-137 released in the air and the ocean
together,
we get an estimate several hundred times the Hiroshima levels. And
some estimates suggest the Fukushima accident could be as much as
one-thousand Hiroshimas…
The
amount released into the atmosphere from the explosion during the
accident at the Chernobyl nuclear plant was 800 to 1000 times the
Hiroshima levels. Put simply, these estimates place Fukushima on par
with Chernobyl…
[T]he
radioactive material released from Fukushima has been dispersed
across the globe…
everyone on earth has been
exposed
to additional radiation… An increase
in cancer will be the result…
Not
a single nuclear expert or policy maker ever seriously considered the
possibility of an accident like this… I had been commenting on the
possibility, referring to some results of simulations. But still I
would have thought the kind of disaster that happened at Fukushima
was some kind of impossible
nightmare―yet
it actually happened. It was
like the worse nightmare becoming a reality…
all those pronuclear people surely never gave it a moment’s
thought. And so when it actually happened, no one had thought about,
let alone built a system to deal with it.
Asia-Pacific
Journal,
Mar 2016: As we learn in this wide-ranging and important interview
[with Hiroaki Koide], the accident often referred to as 3/11 was
enormous and in many ways unprecedented. The full scope of the
disaster is still unknown, but is clearly on the scale of Chernobyl,
placing
the amount of radioactive material released…
up to 1,000
times the Hiroshima bombing
of 1945.
From
2013
Nothing new here.I remember Mike Ruppert talking about this 3 years ago
The Robots Sent Into Fukushima Have "Died"
(Reuters)
- The robots sent in to find highly radioactive fuel
at Fukushima's nuclear
reactors have “died”; a subterranean "ice wall" around
the crippled plant meant to stop groundwater from becoming
contaminated has yet to be finished. And authorities still don’t
how to dispose of highly radioactive water stored in an ever mounting
number of tanks around the site.
Five years ago, one of the worst earthquakes in history triggered a 10-metre high tsunami that crashed into the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station causing multiple meltdowns. Nearly 19,000 people were killed or left missing and 160,000 lost their homes and livelihoods.
Today, the radiation at the Fukushima plant is still so powerful it has proven impossible to get into its bowels to find and remove the extremely dangerous blobs of melted fuel rods.
The plant's operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co (Tepco) , has made some progress, such as removing hundreds of spent fuel roads in one damaged building. But the technology needed to establish the location of the melted fuel rods in the other three reactors at the plant has not been developed.
“It is extremely difficult to access the inside of the nuclear plant," Naohiro Masuda, Tepco's head of decommissioning said in an interview. "The biggest obstacle is the radiation.”
The fuel rods melted through their containment vessels in the reactors, and no one knows exactly where they are now. This part of the plant is so dangerous to humans, Tepco has been developing robots, which can swim under water and negotiate obstacles in damaged tunnels and piping to search for the melted fuel rods.
But as soon as they get close to the reactors, the radiation destroys their wiring and renders them useless, causing long delays, Masuda said.
Each robot has to be custom-built for each building.“It takes two years to develop a single-function robot,” Masuda said.
IRRADIATED WATER
Tepco, which was fiercely criticized for its handling of the disaster, says conditions at the Fukushima power station, site of the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl in Ukraine 30 years ago, have improved dramatically. Radiation levels in many places at the site are now as low as those in Tokyo.
More than 8,000 workers are at the plant at any one time, according to officials on a recent tour. Traffic is constant as they spread across the site, removing debris, building storage tanks, laying piping and preparing to dismantle parts of the plant.
Much of the work involves pumping a steady torrent of water into the wrecked and highly radiated reactors to cool them down. Afterward, the radiated water is then pumped out of the plant and stored in tanks that are proliferating around the site.
What to do with the nearly million tonnes of radioactive water is one of the biggest challenges, said Akiro Ono, the site manager. Ono said he is “deeply worried” the storage tanks will leak radioactive water in the sea - as they have done several times before - prompting strong criticism for the government.
The utility has so far failed to get the backing of local fishermen to release water it has treated into the ocean.
Ono estimates that Tepco has completed around 10 percent of the work to clear the site up - the decommissioning process could take 30 to 40 years. But until the company locates the fuel, it won’t be able to assess progress and final costs, experts say.
The much touted use of X-ray like muon rays has yielded little information about the location of the melted fuel and the last robot inserted into one of the reactors sent only grainy images before breaking down.
ICE WALL
Tepco is building the world’s biggest ice wall to keep groundwater from flowing into the basements of the damaged reactors and getting contaminated.
First suggested in 2013 and strongly backed by the government, the wall was completed in February, after months of delays and questions surrounding its effectiveness. Later this year, Tepco plans to pump water into the wall - which looks a bit like the piping behind a refrigerator - to start the freezing process.
Stopping the ground water intrusion into the plant is critical, said Artie Gunderson, a former nuclear engineer.
“The reactors continue to bleed radiation into the ground water and thence into the Pacific Ocean,” Gunderson said. "When Tepco finally stops the groundwater, that will be the end of the beginning.”
While he would not rule out the possibility that small amounts of radiation are reaching the ocean, Masuda, the head of decommissioning, said the leaks have ended after the company built a wall along the shoreline near the reactors whose depth goes to below the seabed.
“I am not about to say that it is absolutely zero, but because of this wall the amount of release has dramatically dropped,” he said. ...
Five years ago, one of the worst earthquakes in history triggered a 10-metre high tsunami that crashed into the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station causing multiple meltdowns. Nearly 19,000 people were killed or left missing and 160,000 lost their homes and livelihoods.
Today, the radiation at the Fukushima plant is still so powerful it has proven impossible to get into its bowels to find and remove the extremely dangerous blobs of melted fuel rods.
The plant's operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co (Tepco) , has made some progress, such as removing hundreds of spent fuel roads in one damaged building. But the technology needed to establish the location of the melted fuel rods in the other three reactors at the plant has not been developed.
“It is extremely difficult to access the inside of the nuclear plant," Naohiro Masuda, Tepco's head of decommissioning said in an interview. "The biggest obstacle is the radiation.”
The fuel rods melted through their containment vessels in the reactors, and no one knows exactly where they are now. This part of the plant is so dangerous to humans, Tepco has been developing robots, which can swim under water and negotiate obstacles in damaged tunnels and piping to search for the melted fuel rods.
But as soon as they get close to the reactors, the radiation destroys their wiring and renders them useless, causing long delays, Masuda said.
Each robot has to be custom-built for each building.“It takes two years to develop a single-function robot,” Masuda said.
IRRADIATED WATER
Tepco, which was fiercely criticized for its handling of the disaster, says conditions at the Fukushima power station, site of the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl in Ukraine 30 years ago, have improved dramatically. Radiation levels in many places at the site are now as low as those in Tokyo.
More than 8,000 workers are at the plant at any one time, according to officials on a recent tour. Traffic is constant as they spread across the site, removing debris, building storage tanks, laying piping and preparing to dismantle parts of the plant.
Much of the work involves pumping a steady torrent of water into the wrecked and highly radiated reactors to cool them down. Afterward, the radiated water is then pumped out of the plant and stored in tanks that are proliferating around the site.
What to do with the nearly million tonnes of radioactive water is one of the biggest challenges, said Akiro Ono, the site manager. Ono said he is “deeply worried” the storage tanks will leak radioactive water in the sea - as they have done several times before - prompting strong criticism for the government.
The utility has so far failed to get the backing of local fishermen to release water it has treated into the ocean.
Ono estimates that Tepco has completed around 10 percent of the work to clear the site up - the decommissioning process could take 30 to 40 years. But until the company locates the fuel, it won’t be able to assess progress and final costs, experts say.
The much touted use of X-ray like muon rays has yielded little information about the location of the melted fuel and the last robot inserted into one of the reactors sent only grainy images before breaking down.
ICE WALL
Tepco is building the world’s biggest ice wall to keep groundwater from flowing into the basements of the damaged reactors and getting contaminated.
First suggested in 2013 and strongly backed by the government, the wall was completed in February, after months of delays and questions surrounding its effectiveness. Later this year, Tepco plans to pump water into the wall - which looks a bit like the piping behind a refrigerator - to start the freezing process.
Stopping the ground water intrusion into the plant is critical, said Artie Gunderson, a former nuclear engineer.
“The reactors continue to bleed radiation into the ground water and thence into the Pacific Ocean,” Gunderson said. "When Tepco finally stops the groundwater, that will be the end of the beginning.”
While he would not rule out the possibility that small amounts of radiation are reaching the ocean, Masuda, the head of decommissioning, said the leaks have ended after the company built a wall along the shoreline near the reactors whose depth goes to below the seabed.
“I am not about to say that it is absolutely zero, but because of this wall the amount of release has dramatically dropped,” he said. ...
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