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HuffPo: Large amounts of radioactive materials could be deposited across 1,000s of miles if water lost at Fukushima fuel pool — Media just beginning to grasp that danger to world is far from over -Nuclear Expert
Published: April 22nd, 2012 at 4:54 pm ET
By ENENews
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Title: Robert Alvarez: The Fukushima Nuclear Disaster Is Far From Over
Source: Huffington Post
Author: Robert Alvarez*
Date: Apr 22, 2012
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More than a year after the Fukushima nuclear power disaster began, the news media is just beginning to grasp that the dangers to Japan and the rest of the world are far from over. After repeated warnings by former senior Japanese officials, nuclear experts, and now a U.S. Senator, it’s sinking in that the irradiated nuclear fuel stored in spent fuel pools amidst the reactor ruins pose far greater dangers than the molten cores. This is why:
• Nearly all of the 10,893 spent fuel assemblies sit in pools vulnerable to future earthquakes, with roughly 85 times more long-lived radioactivity than released at Chernobyl
• Several pools are 100 feet above the ground and are completely open to the atmosphere because the reactor buildings were demolished by explosions. The pools could possibly topple or collapse from structural damage coupled with another powerful earthquake.
• The loss of water exposing the spent fuel will result in overheating and can cause melting and ignite its zirconium metal cladding resulting in a fire that could deposit large amounts of radioactive materials over hundreds, if not thousands of miles. [...]
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*Robert Alvarez, an Institute for Policy Studies senior scholar, served as senior policy adviser to the Energy Department’s secretary and deputy assistant secretary for national security and the environment from 1993 to 1999. He is an award winning author whose work has appeared in The Washington Post, the Nation, Technology Review, and the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. He has also been featured on”60 Minutes”, Nova and All Things Considered.
Published: April 22nd, 2012 at 4:54 pm ET
By ENENews
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THE REPORT FOLLOWS...
.ENE NEWS...
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HuffPo: Large amounts of radioactive materials could be deposited... more
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Tokyo Electric chief to visit reactor disaster HQ
By Matt Smith, CNN
April 11, 2011 2:29 a.m. EDT
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Tokyo Electric's president is planning to visit the disaster command center
A plant worker falls ill and is diagnosed with exhaustion
Engineers hope a drone will give them a better picture of the reactors
More than 2,000 people protest against nuclear power in Tokyo
Tokyo (CNN) -- The president of the Tokyo Electric Power Company planned to visit the command center for the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster Monday as Japan marked one month since the deadly earthquake that spawned the crisis.
Tokyo Electric President Masataka Shimizu will visit the off-site headquarters but does not plan to visit the crippled power plant itself, the company said.
Shimizu had been hospitalized due to "fatigue and stress" in late March, with company chairman Tsunehisa Katsumata taking over operations in his absence.
Three of the six reactors at the plant were damaged when the tsunami that followed the magnitude 9 earthquake March 11 knocked out cooling systems. Hydrogen explosions have blown apart the building surrounding units 1 and 3, the No. 2 reactor is believed to be leaking highly radioactive water and the spent fuel pools of units 1, 3 and 4 have been an ongoing concern for authorities.
Radioactive particles have been spread across much of the surrounding area, and Japan has dumped thousands of tons of radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean to make room for more dangerously contaminated water now flooding the basements of the units' turbine plants.
Sunday, engineers used a flying drone to peer into the damaged reactors in hopes of getting a better look at the units and hopefully the pools of spent fuel inside, company spokesman Junichi Matsumoto said. Images captured by the drone are expected to be released Monday, he said.
And the controversial dumping of less-contaminated water from a waste treatment facility has been completed, Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency announced Monday. A total of 9,070 metric tons of water was discharged into the Pacific Ocean in the past week, the agency reported -- less than the 10,000 tons originally expected.
Tokyo Electric plans to use the facility to contain some of the water that has flooded the turbine plants behind units 1 through 3, a critical first step toward restoring normal cooling. The company is now using remote-controlled heavy machinery to clear away debris outside the plant and has begun the process of laying new pipes to start pumping radioactive water into the waste reservoir.
One worker fell ill during the work on Sunday, the company said. The subcontractor, a man in his 30s, was taken to a hospital and diagnosed with exhaustion, Tokyo Electric said. He had been working four-hour shifts since March 23, Tokyo Electric said, and it was unclear whether he had received a day off.
The worker was exposed to 4.82 millisieverts of radation, but no radioactive substances were found on his body. His cumulative exposure is 16 millisieverts, well below the 250-millisievert limit for workers in the plant. He was with a group of 30 subcontractors working in the area, and was wearing protective gear, the company said.
Meanwhile, two of the world's largest concrete pumps were en route to Japan as part of the effort to help resolve the crisis. Although the pumps were built to pump concrete, they can be modified to pump water at high pressure, with a 230-feet reach and "pinpoint accuracy," said Bill Dwyer, vice president of sales and marketing for manufacturer Putzmeister America.
"It allows workers to work from a greater distance," Dwyer said. One pump is set to arrive in Japan on Monday and the second on Tuesday, he said.
Workers have been pouring hundreds of tons of fresh water a day into the three damaged reactors and the spent fuel pools of units 1-4 to keep them cool until normal circulation systems can be restored. The No. 2 reactor is believed to be leaking highly radioactive water, some of which had been spilling into the Pacific until Wednesday. Runoff from shore is also believed to be carrying some radioactivity to the sea.
The radioactive particles now in the water are dispersing into the ocean. But concentrations of radioactive iodine-131 remained 25 times higher than the Japanese legal standard in water sampled 16 kilometers (10 miles) south of the plant on Saturday.
That's down from 93 times the limit on Wednesday, according to sampling data released Sunday. Levels of longer-lived cesium-137, which takes 30 years to lose half its radioactivity, remained nearly six times the legal limit but well below levels reported earlier this week.
The week-long discharge was billed as an emergency measure, but it infuriated Japan's fishing industry and drew protests from neighboring South Korea. And the crisis spurred more than 2,000 people to march against nuclear energy in Tokyo on Sunday.
"I was just a couch potato critic, but here we are today with friends for the first time, and I'm sure it's the first time for a lot of people today," said Karima Asuma Stickan, one of the protesters.
Protesters marched from the park, ringed with cherry blossoms, to Tokyo Electric's headquarters and on to the Ministry of the Economy, Trade and Industry, which regulates Japanese nuclear power plants. Makiko Mikami told CNN that no one believes they're getting enough answers from either the utility or the government.
"The problem is, I think I'm not sure they know the whole picture themselves," Mikami said. "If they know, they should share that information with us. And if they don't, they should admit that they're scared as well."
Ailing Chang and Gen Shimada contributed to this report for CNN.Tokyo Electric chief to visit reactor disaster HQ
By Matt Smith, CNN
April 11, 2011... more
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The New York Times...
April 9, 2011
Japan Orders Nuclear Plant Operators to Obtain More Emergency Generators
By ANDREW POLLACK and MATTHEW L. WALD
TOKYO — Radiation readings spiked sharply in one reactor at the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant after a powerful aftershock late Thursday, according to data released by the government, a development that might indicate new damage to the already compromised reactor.
But the plant owner, the Tokyo Electric Power Company, said the gauge used to measure radiation was most likely broken.
The high radiation was measured in the drywell of Reactor No. 1, directly below the reactor pressure vessel and part of the primary containment that is a crucial barrier preventing the escape of radioactive materials. The drywell reading raised the worrisome possibility that highly radioactive water had escaped, and perhaps even material from the nuclear core, although this was far less likely.
Experts said, however, that keeping water in the drywell could limit the damage from any leak.
On Tuesday the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission set off alarms when it said that such a leak might have happened in the No. 2 reactor at the plant, based on a high radiation reading in its drywell. But the agency has since appeared to step back slightly from that theory, emphasizing that its judgment was based on speculation because no one can get close enough to the reactor to judge what is really happening.
And on Saturday, Eliot Brenner, a spokesman for the commission, agreed with the power company’s assessment that the high reading in the No. 1 reactor was most likely in error because there had not been a sharp increase in pressure or temperature in the drywell.
The radiation readings, while still quite high, were down Friday from the highest level, which was recorded a half-hour after the 7.1- magnitude aftershock.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission had expressed concern in a recent report that the damaged nuclear power plant could prove unusually vulnerable to aftershocks.
Peter Yanev, a longtime consultant specializing in the earthquake resistance of nuclear power plants, said that the aftershock late Thursday had not been strong enough to cause new damage to previously undamaged equipment. But the Japanese authorities have not released detailed information on the extent of damage from the initial earthquake nearly a month ago, he cautioned. “If you have something severely damaged, teetering, it can fall over” in a later shock, Mr. Yanev said.
The Japanese government, meanwhile, ordered reactor operators on Saturday to bring in additional emergency diesel generators, as the aftershock again demonstrated the potential for such events to shut down portions of the power grid.
The new government order came after problems were reported at two other nuclear power plants, both run by the Tohoku Electric Power Company. The plants suffered temporary losses of cooling to spent fuel pools, electricity cutoffs and problems with backup diesel generators after Thursday’s aftershock.
The Higashidori plant lost all outside power. Although it had three backup diesel generators, two were out of service for periodic maintenance. The remaining one worked for a while, but later, after some outside power was restored, it stopped because some of its oil spilled out.
At the Onagawa plant, three out of four outside power lines went down, but the plant continued to operate on the fourth line. Although diesel backup was not needed, it was discovered that one of the plant’s two diesel generators had been out of order since April 1.
“There was no problem this time,” said Hidehiko Nishiyama, deputy director general of the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, which regulates the atomic energy industry, at a news conference. However, he said, nuclear plant operators will now be required to have more backup diesel generators available and working.
Mr. Nishiyama said his agency was also trying to find the causes for the loss of cooling to spent fuel pools. The cause of one stoppage seemed to be essentially a blown fuse, Mr. Nishiyama said.
Loss of cooling can allow spent fuel to heat up, which can lead to the release of radioactive materials.
The government also moved to ban the planting of rice in soil containing too much radioactive material, which has been released from the Fukushima Daiichi plant in the weeks since a catastrophic earthquake and tsunami. Sales of some milk, vegetables and fish have been prohibited because of contamination, but the new measures affect the nation’s staple crop, a foundation of its culture as well as its diet.
The new policy on rice will ban planting of the crop in soil that has more than 5,000 becquerels of cesium-137 per kilogram of soil.
So far, radiation testers have found only two spots in northeastern Japan, both in the town of Iitate, 25 miles from the Fukushima Daiichi plant, that has had cesium levels that high. Cesium-137 can damage cells and lead to an increased risk of cancer.
The national and prefectural governments are now hurriedly performing broader soil surveys to identify which areas would be off limits to planting.
With planting about to begin, “we don’t have so much time,” said Sumito Yasuoka, an official in the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, who said farmers pressed the government to let them know if they could plant their crop. The government also wants to assure consumers that the rice they eat will be safe.
The level of 5,000 becquerels per kilogram was chosen because rice grown in such soil would be expected to end up with about 500 becquerels of cesium 137 in the rice. That is the existing limit for vegetables and some other foods, Mr. Yasuoka said.
Fukushima Prefecture is the nation’s fourth-largest rice producer, and rice is its biggest crop, so any ban on planting would cause financial hardship.
“It hurts terribly,” said Yoshinori Sato, an official of an agricultural cooperative in Fukushima Prefecture with 13,000 households as members. Mr. Sato said that about half the rice acres his co-op’s members hoped to plant this year might be off limits, either because of radiation or because of tsunami damage.
Mindful of the sensitivities, Michihiko Kano, the minister of agriculture, visited Iitate on Saturday and promised that farmers who were not allowed to grow rice because of soil contamination would be compensated.
Andrew Pollack reported from Tokyo and Matthew L. Wald from Washington. William J. Broad contributed reporting from New York and Yasuko Kamiizumi, Ken Ijichi and Kantaro Suzuki from Tokyo.The New York Times...
April 9, 2011
Japan Orders Nuclear Plant Operators to... more
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http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/ed20110407a1.html
Thursday, April 7, 2011
EDITORIAL
Overcoming the nuclear crisis
The crisis at Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant does not warrant optimism. Nuclear fuel in the cores of the No. 1, No. 2 and No. 3 reactors is believed to have been severely damaged. In the No. 4 reactor's storage, where spent nuclear fuel is kept, water evaporated at one point, and a hydrogen explosion released radioactive substances into the environment
The government should pay close attention to proposals made by 16 Japanese experts on nuclear power engineering, nuclear physics and radiology on April 1. It should mobilize all available means to mitigate the crisis.
Tepco is cooling the reactors by pumping water into them by using pumps connected with external power sources. But it cannot stop highly radioactive water from flowing out of the reactors. The more water it pumps into the reactors, the more contaminated water flows outside. Apparently, components for containing radioactive water have been damaged. The No. 2 reactor's suppression pool is feared to have cracked.
On land, the accumulated radiation level during 11 days from March 23 has reached 10.34 millisieverts in the town of Namie, Fukushima Prefecture, just outside the 30-km radius of Fukushima No. 1. Residents inside the zone should evacuate or stay indoors. If the accumulated level over several days reaches a range of 10 to 50 millisieverts, the government calls on residents to stay inside their homes to avoid radiation.
The situation at Fukushima No. 1 is "extremely serious" and demands Japan's all-out efforts, the 16 experts said in their April 1 statement. Three of the 16 — Mr. Shiori Ishino, professor emeritus at the University of Tokyo, Mr. Shunichi Tanaka, former acting chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, and Mr. Shojiro Matsuura, former chairman of the Nuclear Safety Commission — explained the statement at the education and science ministry.
Since those who signed the statement include former members of the AEC, a body that sets the nation's basic policy for development and use of nuclear power, the NSC, a body that sets the nation's basic nuclear safety policy, and scientists belonging to the Atomic Energy Society of Japan, the government and Tepco should share their sense of crisis and humbly follow their proposals.
The 16 "as people who have pushed peaceful use of nuclear power" expressed their regret over the nuclear crisis and apologized to people. But they did not hide their fear that a critical situation may develop at Fukushima No. 1. They do not rule out the possibility that as time goes on, a molten core melts a weak part of a pressure vessel and enters a containment vessel, destroying the reactor's function to contain radioactive substances, or that hydrogen gas forming inside a pressure vessel explodes and destroys a containment vessel, causing serious radioactive contamination over a large expanse of land and sea. They warn that release of a large amount of radioactive substances could make uninhabitable not only the current evacuation zone but also larger areas.
Mr. Tanaka and others said that the current makeshift efforts to cool the No. 1, 2 and 3 reactors will not be able to completely cool down molten nuclear fuel so as it will not burst through the bottom of pressure vessels. They also said the three reactors contain a much larger amount of radioactive substances than the Chernobyl nuclear plant did.
The points made by the statement include: (1) utmost efforts must be made to both prevent the release of a large amount of radioactive substances and to reactivate the residual heat removal system which internally circulates water to cool reactors and spent fuel storages, (2) spent nuclear fuel must be completely immersed in water, (3) detailed measurement of radioactivity both in the air and the soil in various areas and assessment of their effects must be announced so that area-specific measures can be taken and (4) residents should be fully informed before and after radioactive substances are vented from reactors.
It adds that since hydrogen is forming all the time in the reactors, hydrogen explosions must be prevented at any cost.
The statement also calls for (1)increasing personnel at Fukushima No. 1 to lower their exposure to radiation and to enable them to take enough rest and (2) setting up the headquarters for the crisis containing operations inside or near the plant site (so that headquarters personnel share the burden of radiation exposure and pain with on-site workers.)
The 16 experts say it is essential to set up a system in which the NSC will take the lead in strategically and flexibly utilizing the knowledge and experience of Japan's nuclear authorities — including the Japan Atomic Energy Agency and the National Institute of Radiological Sciences — the power and related industries and universities to end the nuclear crisis. Prime Minister Naoto Kan must exercise strong leadership in setting up this system as soon as possible.http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/ed20110407a1.html
Thursday, April 7, 2011... more
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48-foot wall of water hit Japanese nuclear power plant
http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/04/09/japan.nuclear.reactors/index.html?hpt=T1
Video shows tsunami crashing into Fukushima nuclear site
By Brian Walker and Matt Smith, CNN
April 9, 2011 4:02 p.m. EDT
Click to play
48-foot wave hits nuclear plant
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
NEW: Video shows the March 11 tsunami swamping the plant
Nuclear plants will now need 2 backup generators per reactor
Engineers examine rising water levels in reactor No. 3 condenser
Nitrogen concentrations boosted in reactor No. 1
Tokyo (CNN) -- A brief video clip released Saturday captures the massive tsunami that crippled Japan's Fukushima Daiichi power plant, showing the wall of water that slammed into the facility and created an ongoing crisis.
The video shows the giant wave generated by the historic March 11 earthquake crashing over the plant's seawall and engulfing the facility, with one sheet of spray rising higher than the buildings that house the plant's six reactors. Tokyo Electric Power, the plant's owner, told reporters the wall of water was likely 14 to 15 meters (45 to 48 feet) higher than normal sea levels -- easily overwhelming the plant's 5-meter seawall.
The footage was was shot from high ground about 900 meters south of the plant by a worker who evacuated before the tsunami hit, the Tokyo Electric Power Company said in releasing the six-second clip.
Photos released by the company showed shattered windows, scattered papers and dangling ceiling tiles throughout the plant's now-empty office annex. Two workers were killed in the basement of the No. 4 reactor's turbine plant when the tsunami struck, and their bodies were recovered only last week.
The tsunami knocked out generators and pumps needed to cool the plant's three operating reactors following the magnitude 9 earthquake, leaving engineers struggling to prevent a bigger disaster as those units radioactive cores overheated. In response to the quake, Japanese regulators issued tougher standards for emergency power at nuclear plants Saturday.
Power stations will be required to have two diesel generators as backup power for each reactor unit, said Hidehiko Nishiyama, the chief spokesman for Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency. Current regulations require only one generator per unit.
At the plant, workers are beginning to lay ground-level pipes between the reactor units and the radioactive waste treatment facility where engineers hope to pump the contaminated water that has been building up, Sakae Muto, the head of the utility's nuclear power division, said Saturday.
Workers have been pouring hundreds of tons of water a day into the reactors in an effort to keep them cool until normal circulation systems can be restored. The No. 2 reactor is believed to be leaking highly radioactive water, some of which had been spilling into the Pacific until Wednesday, while flooded basements in the turbine plants of all three units are making it impossible to restore power, company officials said.
And engineers have been adding nitrogen into the primary containment shell around reactor No. 1, a move aimed at countering a buildup of flammable hydrogen in the unit. The inert nitrogen displaces oxygen that could fuel an explosion, like the hydrogen blast that blew apart the buildings surrounding units 1 and 3 in the days following the earthquake.
Hydrogen buildup is a symptom of damaged fuel rods in the cores of the reactors. But Tokyo Electric has called the chances of another explosion "extremely low." And new equipment allowed engineers to raise the concentration of nitrogen from 98 percent to 99 percent Saturday, Nishiyama said.
Workers returned to the plant Friday following a magnitude 7.1 aftershock late Thursday night that forced them to evacuate for about eight hours, Japanese authorities said. The aftershock is not believed to have inflicted any further damage to the plant, Tokyo Electric and the safety agency reported Friday.
Hiroo Saso and Gen Shimada contributed to this report for CNN.48-foot wall of water hit Japanese nuclear power plant... more
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PART ONE...
CNN...
Japan dumps thousands of tons of radioactive water into sea
By the CNN Wire Staff
April 4, 2011 9:47 a.m. EDT
A Tokyo Electric Power Company picture from April 2 shows water gushing from the cracked concrete shaft.
Tokyo (CNN) -- Japan began dumping thousands of tons of radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean on Monday, an emergency move officials said was needed to curtail a worse leak from the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.
In all, about 11,500 tons of radioactive water that has collected at the nuclear facility will be dumped into the sea, officials said Monday, as workers also try to deal with a crack that has been a conduit for contamination.
The radiation levels were highest in the water that was being drained from reactor No. 6, the officials said.
These are the latest but hardly the only challenges facing workers at the embattled power plant and its six reactors, which have been in constant crisis since last month's ruinous earthquake and tsunami.
Officials with Tokyo Electric Power Company, which runs the plant, proposed the release of excess water that has pooled in and around the Nos. 5 and 6 reactors into the sea. But most of the dumped water -- 10,000 tons -- will come from the plant's central waste treatment facility, which will then be used to store highly radioactive water from the No. 2 unit, an official with the power company said.
The water in reactors Nos. 5 and 6 is coming from a subdrain and wasn't inside the building itself, officials said. Tests suggest that groundwater is the source of the contamination in these two units, but they are not certain.
Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano called the dumping "unavoidable." The liquid was most likely contaminated in the process of trying to cool nuclear fuel rods.
The scope of the dump was staggering.
"For an idea about how much is 11,500 tons, one metric ton is 1,000 kilograms or about 2,200 pounds, which is close to an English ton. Water is about 8.5 pounds per gallon, so one ton is about 260 gallons," said Gary Was, a professor of nuclear engineering at the University of Michigan. "So 11,500 tons is about 3 million gallons. A spent fuel pool holds around 300,000 gallons. So this amount of water is equivalent to the volume of roughly 10 (spent fuel pools)."
It could take 50 hours to dump all the water, Tokyo Electric said.
The dumping of so much radioactive water into the ocean conjures fears of mutated sea life and contamination of the human food chain, but one expert said the radiation will be quickly diluted, minimizing risk.
"What we have to watch is how these materials accumulate in food products and then could be consumed by people," something that can be monitored, said John Till, president of Risk Assessment Corp.
"The ocean is so vast that this material would dilute very rapidly and I wouldn't see any lasting effects at all," he said.
The build-up of water could cause problems around the nuclear facility, which is 240 kilometers (150 miles) north of Tokyo, Edano said Monday.
Authorities have made a priority of dealing with water from the No. 2 unit, some of which has been gushing into the sea through a crack in a concrete shaft.
"The radioactivity level is very high near the No. 2 reactor, and we know this. We have to stop the leak as early as possible to prevent this from going into the sea," Edano said. "The radioactivity level is much less in the water from the Nos. 3 and 4 units."
Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency officials said Monday night that the hope is that pumping out the No. 2 reactor turbine plant will lower the water level enough that contaminated liquid won't be able to reach the sea.
"I am not able to say for certain whether or not this will be the last discharge, but we certainly would like to avoid releasing any such water into the sea as much as possible," agency spokesman Hidehiko Nishiyama said.
Officials were still awaiting test results to confirm the water pouring into the ocean is leaking from the highly radioactive No. 2 reactor.
"We don't know clearly, but we feel it is somehow leaking from Unit 2," Nishiyama said. Even if the water is confirmed to have come from the reactor, neither Tokyo Electric nor government officials know how it is making its way from the reactor to the leaking pit, he said.
Once the water is pumped out of the waste treatment reservoir, the agency believes it can safely transfer the water from the basement of the No. 2 turbine plant to the reservoir without further leaks, he said.
Though Japanese officials say the water being discharged is less radioactive than the water now leaking into the sea, its top concentration of radioactive iodine-131 is 20 becquerels per cubic centimeter, or 200,000 becquerels per kilogram. That's 10 times the level of radioactivity permitted in food. But since it's being dumped into the Pacific, it will be quickly diluted, according to Dr. James Cox, a radiation oncologist at Houston's MD Anderson Cancer Center and a CNN consultant.
Reactors No. 1 and No. 3, which have lower levels of water, need to be drained as well. Tokyo Electric's plan is to pump that water to other storage tanks, including some that still need to be set up.
Attempts to fill the 20-centimeter (8-inch) crack outside the No. 2 reactor's turbine building -- on Saturday by pouring in concrete, then Sunday by using a chemical compound mixed with sawdust and newspaper -- were not successful.
CONTINUED...PART ONE...
CNN...
Japan dumps thousands of tons of radioactive water into... more
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The New York Times...
Higher Radiation Levels Found at Japanese Reactor
Carlos Barria/Reuters
Family members of the earthquake and tsunami victims at a mass funeral of their relatives on Saturday in Kesennuma, Japan.
By DAVID JOLLY and HIROKO TABUCHI
Published: March 27, 2011
TOKYO — Japanese officials continued to battle a spreading contamination problem at the Fukushima nuclear complex on Sunday, saying that water pooling inside one of its reactors and the seawater just outside the plant were showing sharply increased levels of radiation.
Status of the Nuclear Reactors
A daily tracker of the damage at the two imperiled nuclear plants.
Carlos Barria/Reuters
Tsunami victims in Kesennuma, Japan, dug through debris. The United Nations nuclear chief said Saturday that the country was far from the end of the nuclear crisis.
The developments came after the world’s chief nuclear inspector said that Japan was “still far from the end of the accident” that struck the plant, which continues to spew radiation into the atmosphere and the sea. Yukiya Amano, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, acknowledged that the authorities were still unsure about whether the reactor cores and spent fuel were covered with the water needed to cool them and end the crisis.
Mr. Amano, taking care to say that he was not criticizing Japan’s response under extraordinary circumstances, said, “More efforts should be done to put an end to the accident.”
More than two weeks after a devastating earthquake and tsunami, he cautioned that the nuclear emergency could still go on for weeks, if not months, given the enormous damage to the plant.
His concerns were underscored on Sunday when officials in Japan announced higher levels of radiation in pools of water at the facility’s stricken reactors.
The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said that water seeping out of the crippled No. 2 reactor building into the adjacent turbine building contained levels of radioactive iodine 134 that were about 10 million times the level normally found in water used inside nuclear power plants.
The higher levels may suggest a leak from the reactor’s fuel rods — from either the suppression chamber under the rods or various piping — or even a breach in the pressure vessel that houses the rods, the Japanese nuclear regulator said.
Tetsuo Iguchi, a professor in the department of quantum engineering at Nagoya University, said that at that level of radiation, workers would be able to remain on site for only about 15 minutes before health considerations required them to leave, further complicating work.
“First, Tokyo Electric has to figure out where the leak is coming from,” he said, “then they’ve got to isolate the water somehow. It’s a difficult task.”
Tests also found increased levels of radioactive cesium, a substance with a longer half-life, the Japanese safety agency said.
“Because these substances originate from nuclear fission, there is a high possibility they originate from the reactor,” said Hidehiko Nishiyama, the agency’s deputy director-general, at a news conference. He said that it was likely that radiation was leaking from the pipes or the suppression chamber, and not directly from the pressure vessel, because water levels and pressure in the vessel were relatively stable.
Mr. Nishiyama also said that radioactive iodine in seawater just outside the plant had risen to 1,850 times the usual level on Sunday, up from 1,250 on Saturday.
“Radiation levels are increasing and measures need to be taken,” he said, but added that he did not think there was need to worry about high levels of radiation immediately escaping the plant.
Yukio Edano, the chief cabinet secretary, said he did not think the pressure vessel, which cases the fuel rods, was broken at the No. 2 reactor. He said pressure levels inside the reactor remained higher than atmospheric pressure, suggesting that there was no breach.
“I don’t think the container is breached, but there is a possibility the water is coming from somewhere inside the reactor,” he said. “We want to find out as quickly as possible where the highly radioactive water is leaking from, and take measures to deal with it,” Mr. Edano said on a live interview on the public broadcaster, NHK, early Sunday.
Naoto Sekimura, a professor of engineering at the University of Tokyo, told NHK on Sunday that information suggested that the No. 2 unit at Fukushima was leaking significantly more radiation that the No. 1 unit or the No. 3 unit.
“The No. 2 unit’s suppression pool, which connects to the containment building, is damaged, so its ability to contain radiation has been compromised,” Mr. Sekimura said. “They’ve got to find the source of the leak.”
Separately, the I.A.E.A., citing data from the Japanese authorities, reported that two of three workers who were exposed to radioactive water on Saturday suffered “significant skin contamination over their legs.”
“The Japanese authorities have stated that during medical examinations carried out at the National Institute of Radiological Sciences in the Chiba Prefecture, the level of local exposure to the workers’ legs was estimated to be between 2 and 6 sieverts,” the I.A.E.A. said on its Web site.
“While the patients did not require medical treatment, doctors decided to keep them in hospital and monitor their progress over coming days.”
The elevated levels of radiation at and around the Fukushima plant will require careful monitoring of seafood in Japan, said Kimberlee J. Kearfott, a professor of nuclear engineering and radiological sciences at the University of Michigan.
“It is extremely important that seafood be carefully monitored,” she said in an e-mail. “This is because many of the radionuclides are concentrated in the environment,” she added. “For example, iodines are concentrated in kelp (a Japanese food, seaweed) and shrimp.
“Iodines, cesium and strontium are concentrated in other types of seafood,” she continued. “Fish can act like tea or coffee presses. When you push down the plungers, the grounds all end up on one side. In this case, that is the fish.”
She said an example of this phenomenon occurred after the Chernobyl disaster, when specific radionuclides were concentrated far away in Norwegian lichens. Reindeer ate the lichens, concentrating it again, a danger to the native peoples whose diet includes a large amount of reindeer meat.
William J. Broad reported from New York, and David Jolly from Tokyo. Reporting was contributed by David E. Sanger from Palo Alto, Calif., Hiroko Tabuchi and Chika Ohshima from Tokyo, and Kevin Drew from Hong Kong.
CLICK ON LINK ABOVE FOR MORE PHOTOS
http://singlemindedwomen.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/japan-nuclear-meltdown-430x297.jpgThe New York Times...
Higher Radiation Levels Found at Japanese Reactor
Carlos... more
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PART ONE...
March 26, 2011
Japanese gov't criticizes nuke plant operator
Officials admonish missteps at Fukushima plant, demand greater transparency from company as workers struggle to contain radiation
(AP)
SENDAI, Japan - Japan's government revealed a series of missteps by the operator of a radiation-leaking nuclear plant on Saturday, including sending workers in without protective footwear in its faltering efforts to control a monumental crisis.
The U.S. Navy, meanwhile, rushed to deliver fresh water to replace corrosive salt water now being used in a desperate bid to cool the plant's overheated reactors.
Government spokesman Yukio Edano urged Tokyo Electric Power Co. to be more transparent, two days after two workers at the tsunami-damaged Fukushima Dai-ichi plant suffered skin burns when they stepped in water that was 10,000 times more radioactive than levels normally found near the reactors.
"We strongly urge TEPCO to provide information to the government more promptly," Edano said.
The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, or NISA, said TEPCO was aware there was high radiation in the air at one of the plant's six units several days before the accident. And the two workers injured were wearing boots that only came up to their ankles — hardly high enough to protect their legs, agency spokesman Hidehiko Nishiyama said.
"Regardless of whether there was an awareness of high radioactivity in the stagnant water, there were problems in the way work was conducted," Nishiyama said.
NISA warned TEPCO to improve and ensure workers' safety, and TEPCO has taken measures to that effect, Nishiyama said, without elaborating.
TEPCO spokesman Hajime Motojuku declined to comment.
The government's admonishments came as workers at the plant struggled to stop a troubling rise in radioactivity and remove dangerously contaminated water from the facility, which has been leaking radiation since a massive earthquake and tsunami on March 11 knocked out the plant's key cooling systems. Officials have been using seawater to try to cool the plant, but fears are growing that the corrosive salt in the water could further damage the machinery inside the reactor units.
TEPCO is now rushing to inject the reactors with fresh water instead, and to begin extracting the radioactive water, Nishiyama said.
Defense Minister Yoshimi Kitazawa said late Friday that the U.S. government had made "an extremely urgent" request to switch to fresh water. He said the U.S. military was sending water to nearby Onahama Bay and that water injections could begin in the next few days.
The U.S. 7th Fleet confirmed that barges loaded with 500,000 gallons of fresh water supplies were on their way.
The situation at the crippled complex remains unpredictable, Edano said Saturday, adding that it would be "a long time" until the crisis ends.
"We seem to be keeping the situation from turning worse," he said. "But we still cannot be optimistic."
CONTINUED...PART ONE...
March 26, 2011
Japanese gov't criticizes nuke plant operator... more
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How the “Peaceful Atom” Became a Serial Killer
http://mjcdn.motherjones.com/preset_12/nuclear.jpg
The nuclear myth melts down.
— By Chip Ward (Mother Jones)
Thu Mar. 24, 2011 1:36 PM PDT
This story first appeared on the TomDispatch website.
PART ONE…
When nuclear reactors blow, the first thing that melts down is the truth. Just as in the Chernobyl catastrophe almost 25 years ago when Soviet authorities denied the extent of radiation and downplayed the dire situation that was spiraling out of control, Japanese authorities spent the first week of the Fukushima crisis issuing conflicting and confusing reports. We were told that radiation levels were up, then down, then up, but nobody aside from those Japanese bureaucrats could verify the levels and few trusted their accuracy. The situation is under control, they told us, but workers are being evacuated. There is no danger of contamination, but stay inside and seal your doors.
The First Atomic Snow Job
The bureaucratization of horror into bland and reassuring pronouncements was to be expected, especially from an industry where misinformation is the rule. Although you might suppose that the nuclear industry's outstanding characteristic would be its expertise, since it's loaded with junior Einsteins who grasp the math and physics required to master the most awesomely sophisticated technology humans have ever created, think again. Based on the record, it's most outstanding characteristic is a fundamental dishonesty. I learned that the hard way as a grassroots activist organizing opposition to a scheme hatched by a consortium of nuclear utilities to park thousands of tons of highly radioactive fuel rods, like the ones now burning at Fukushima, in my Utah backyard.
Here's what I took away from that experience: the nuclear industry is a snake-oil culture of habitual misrepresentation, pervasive wishful thinking, deep denial, and occasional outright deception. For more than 50 years, it has habitually lied about risks and costs while covering up every violation and failure it could. Whether or not its proponents and spokespeople are dishonest or merely deluded can be debated, but the outcome—dangerous misinformation and the meltdown of honest civic discourse—remains the same, as we once again see at Fukushima.
Established at the dawn of the nuclear age, the pattern of dissemblance had become a well-worn rut long before the Japanese reactors spun out of control. In the early 1950s, the disciples of nuclear power, or the "peaceful atom" as it was then called, insisted that nuclear power would soon become so cheap and efficient that it would be offered to consumers for free. Visionaries that they were, they suggested that cities would be constructed with building materials impregnated with uranium so that snow removal would be unnecessary. Atomic bombs, they urged, should be used to carve out new coastal harbors for ships. In low doses, they swore, radiation was actually beneficial to one's health.
Such notions and outright fantasies, as well as propaganda for a new industry and a new way of war—even if laughable today—had tragic results back then. Thousands of American GIs, for instance, were marched into ground zero just after above-ground nuclear tests had been set off to observe their responses to what military planners assumed would be the atomic battlefield of the future. Ignorance, it turns out, is not bliss, and thousands of those soldiers later became ill. Many died young.
Unwary civilians who lived downwind of America's western testing grounds were also exposed to nuclear fallout and they, too, suffered horribly from a variety of cancers and other illnesses. Uranium miners exposed to radiation in the tunnels where they wrestled from the earth the raw materials for the nuclear age also became ill and died too soon, as did workers processing that uranium into weapons and fuel. Many of those miners were poor Navajos from my backyard in Utah where a new uranium boom, part of the so-called nuclear renaissance, was—before Fukushima—set to take shape.
CONTINUED…How the “Peaceful Atom” Became a Serial Killer... more
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Smoke spews from 2 reactors at stricken Japanese nuclear plant
PART ONE...
By the CNN Wire Staff
March 21, 2011 11:07 p.m. EDT
Spraying the reactor with concrete recalls measures taken to contain the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl in 1986.
Tokyo (CNN) -- What appeared to be smoke was rising Tuesday from two adjacent reactors in the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, a nuclear safety official said.
Smoke spewed Monday from the same reactors, setbacks that came despite fervent efforts to prevent the further release of radioactive materials at the stricken facility.
Hidehiko Nishiyama, an official with Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, said smoke was rising from the plant's No. 2 and No. 3 reactors. It was not immediately clear why.
On Monday, after 6 p.m., white smoke was seen emanating from the facility's No. 2 reactor, according to Nishiyama. About two hours earlier, workers were evacuated from the area around the No. 3 reactor after gray smoke began to rise from the wreckage of its steel-and-concrete housing, which was blown apart by a hydrogen explosion last week.
The No. 3 reactor has been the top priority for authorities trying to contain damage to the plant and stave off a possible meltdown. Its fuel includes a small percentage of plutonium mixed with the uranium in its fuel rods, which experts say could cause more harm than regular uranium fuels in the event of a meltdown.
Nishiyama said there was no evident explosion, spike in radiation or injuries at the No. 3 reactor Monday. The smoke was coming from the building's southeastern side, where the reactor's spent nuclear fuel pool is located, but the origin of the smoke at either reactor was unknown.
The coolant pools contain spent fuel rods that still generate high amounts of heat. Authorities have been working to keep them full to prevent the rods from being exposed. The nuclear agency estimated that, between roughly 9 p.m. Sunday to 4 a.m. Monday, 1,170 tons of water were sprayed on the reactor and its fuel pool.
In Geneva, Switzerland, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency warned that while signs of improvement at the site are evident, the plant "has been seriously damaged by flood water and is littered with debris."
"The crisis has still not been resolved, and the situation at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant remains very serious," Yukiya Amano, the director-general of the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency, told its board of governors Monday after a visit to the site.
"Buildings have been damaged by explosions," he said. "There has, for the most part, been no electric power. Radiation levels are elevated. It is no exaggeration to describe the work of the emergency teams as heroic."
On the other hand, Amano told reporters, rising pressure inside the containment unit at reactor No. 3, a concern from the weekend, was down and power had been restored to some of the reactors.
The plant's owner, the Tokyo Electric Power Company, has been working to restore electricity to the damaged plant after it was hit by the massive earthquake and tsunami the struck northern Japan on March 11. The electric company told CNN on Monday that electrical cables had been laid to connect the No. 3 reactor and the neighboring No. 4 reactor with an outside power source.
That meant that power could now be funneled to all six of the plant's reactors for its cooling systems. But electricity was still not moving to units No. 1 through No. 4 because the quake and tsunami had damaged numerous pumps and other gear.
A Tokyo Electric official said spare parts were being brought in so that everything could work again.
The disaster has killed more than 8,900 people and left close to 13,000 missing, many of them killed as a wall of water rushed in following the quake. Ever since, authorities have been working to avert further crisis -- and prevent more deaths -- at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, some 240 kilometers (150 miles) north of Tokyo.
Those efforts include the possibility of encasing one or more of the reactors in concrete, a last-ditch effort similar to what was done after the 1986 meltdown at the Chernobyl nuclear plant in the former Soviet Union -- considered the worst nuclear disaster at a plant.
Japan's nuclear agency said Monday that it expected to conduct tests on what it called a "concrete pump engine," which the agency initially said would pump a mix of mortar and water into the No. 4 reactor's spent nuclear fuel pool and containment vessel, the agency said.
But Tokyo Electric said later that the device would be used only to pour water, not the mortar mixture.
In just over two hours on Monday morning alone, 13 fire engines sprayed about 90 tons of water toward that reactor in an attempt to cool it down.
CONTINUED...Smoke spews from 2 reactors at stricken Japanese nuclear plant
PART ONE...... more
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Small amounts of radiation headed for California, but no health risk seen
Very low levels of radioactive isotopes from the damaged Japanese nuclear plant are expected to reach California as soon as Friday, but experts say the amount will be well within safe limits. A network of radiation monitors is keeping close watch.
By Ralph Vartabedian, Los Angeles Times
March 17, 2011
Small amounts of radioactive isotopes from the crippled Japanese nuclear power plant are being blown toward North America high in the atmosphere over the Pacific Ocean and will reach California as soon as Friday, according to experts.
A network of sensors in the U.S. and around the world is watching for the first signs of that fallout, though experts said they were confident that the amount of radiation would be well within safe limits.
Operated by the Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. network known as Radnet is a system of 100 radiation monitors that work 24 hours a day, spread across the country in places such as Anaheim, Bakersfield and Eureka. In addition, a network of 63 sensors is operated by the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization, an international agency allied with the United Nations.
,NRC
Atmospheric experts said the material should begin showing up on the West Coast as early as Friday, though it could take up to an additional week for the 5,000-mile trip from Japan to Southern California. Although the organization has told its member countries that the first indication of radiation would hit on Friday, the plume from a North Korean nuclear test in 2006 took about two weeks to travel to North America, U.N. officials said.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which oversees the U.S. nuclear industry, said Wednesday that it did not expect dangerous levels of radioactivity to hit the West Coast, Hawaii, Alaska or U.S. territories in the Pacific. But whatever levels reach the U.S. initially are likely to increase in subsequent days, because radioactive emissions from the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant have grown since the disaster began Friday. The NRC sharply raised its warning to American citizens in Japan, urging them to evacuate an area within 50 miles of the Fukushima complex. Japanese authorities have ordered an evacuation within about 12 miles of the plant.
The NRC released computerized projections showing that within half a mile of the plant, radiation levels were so high that one could receive a fatal dose, and that even 50 miles away one could receive more than 16 times the average annual dose all people are exposed to from natural sources.
Those numbers were sharply higher than ones the NRC released days earlier. But although the Fukushima reactors are leaking more radiation now, experts continued to say that the particles would wash out of the atmosphere before they could reach the U.S.
So far, Tokyo Electric Power Co., which operates the Fukushima facility, and the Japanese government have not released any measurements or estimates of the total amount of radioactivity released by the accident. These numbers would be crucial to better project whether the material could affect other Asian nations, the Pacific islands or even the U.S.
Edwin Lyman, a specialist at the nuclear watchdog group Union of Concerned Scientists, said that although it was true that the more radioactivity released in Japan the more could migrate away from the region, he did not think the U.S. was at serious risk.
"We can never say never," Lyman said. "My judgment is that there will probably be measurable radiation, but except for a few hot spots it is not something we should really worry about."
Lyman said that the NRC's warning Wednesday to Americans in Japan to evacuate 50 miles from the Fukushima reactors was a long-overdue admission that the agency's prior warnings of a 10-mile exclusion zone from U.S. reactors during an emergency was inadequate.
Key federal officials involved in the Radnet monitoring program have so far not disclosed their predictions for U.S. radioactive exposure. The projections are being developed by the National Atmospheric Release Advisory Center operated at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Northern California. The center, part of the Energy Department, uses sophisticated models on supercomputers to project the movement of radioactive particles and other toxic substances through the atmosphere.
However, a computer model of atmospheric movements developed by the Belgian Institute for Space Aeronomy shows that the Fukushima plumes could travel across the Pacific, though the levels of radioactivity that could reach the West Coast of the U.S. remain unclear.
It appears that all of the models, however, are not based on measurements of radioactivity at the source and a projection of actual radioactive fallout in the U.S., but rather project a relative scale of radioactivity. Since Japanese authorities have said little about the amount of the releases at Fukushima, nobody can say how much radioactivity will hit California.
The models show that even with prevailing easterly winds, the plumes whip back and forth over a wide area of Japan's east coast, Russia's Kamchatka peninsula and Alaska's Aleutian Islands. It is unknown whether nuclear fallout is hitting the vast wilderness of northeastern Asia.
Of particular concern, however, is radiation emanating from Fukushima's No. 3 reactor. That reactor uses plutonium fuel, which poses a special health risk even in small quantities if the fallout were to reach U.S. shores.
A leading radiological health expert at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Wednesday that the CDC was still confident that there would be no serious health consequences here. But CDC officials are watching the situation carefully.
"We have a saying: 'Modeling is OK, but measurement is everything,'" he said.
The Environmental Protection Agency said that it was watching the situation closely, but that its Radnet system had not yet detected radioactivity. It has added seven additional portable radiation monitors: two in Guam, three in Alaska and two in Hawaii.
PHOTO: A Radnet monitor on the roof of the Bay Area Air Quality Management building in San Francisco. (Associated Press)Small amounts of radiation headed for California, but no health risk seen
Very low... more
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The New York Times
March 14, 2011 - 1:51AM PT
Radioactive Releases in Japan Could Last Months, Experts Say
PART ONE...
By DAVID E. SANGER and MATTHEW L. WALD
WASHINGTON — As the scale of Japan’s nuclear crisis begins to come to light, experts in Japan and the United States say the country is now facing a cascade of accumulating problems that suggest that radioactive releases of steam from the crippled plants could go on for weeks or even months.
The emergency flooding of two stricken reactors with seawater and the resulting steam releases are a desperate step intended to avoid a much bigger problem: a full meltdown of the nuclear cores in two reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station. On Monday, an explosion blew the roof off the second reactor, not damaging the core, officials said, but presumably leaking more radiation.
So far, Japanese officials have said the melting of the nuclear cores in the two plants is assumed to be “partial,” and the amount of radioactivity measured outside the plants, though twice the level Japan considers safe, has been relatively modest.
But Pentagon officials reported Sunday that helicopters flying 60 miles from the plant picked up small amounts of radioactive particulates — still being analyzed, but presumed to include cesium-137 and iodine-121 — suggesting widening environmental contamination.
In a country where memories of a nuclear horror of a different sort in the last days of World War II weigh heavily on the national psyche and national politics, the impact of continued venting of long-lasting radioactivity from the plants is hard to overstate.
Japanese reactor operators now have little choice but to periodically release radioactive steam as part of an emergency cooling process for the fuel of the stricken reactors that may continue for a year or more even after fission has stopped. The plant’s operator must constantly try to flood the reactors with seawater, then release the resulting radioactive steam into the atmosphere, several experts familiar with the design of the Daiichi facility said.
That suggests that the tens of thousands of people who have been evacuated may not be able to return to their homes for a considerable period, and that shifts in the wind could blow radioactive materials toward Japanese cities rather than out to sea.
Re-establishing normal cooling of the reactors would require restoring electric power — which was cut in the earthquake and tsunami — and now may require plant technicians working in areas that have become highly contaminated with radioactivity.
More steam releases also mean that the plume headed across the Pacific could continue to grow. On Sunday evening, the White House sought to tamp down concerns, saying that modeling done by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission had concluded that “Hawaii, Alaska, the U.S. Territories and the U.S. West Coast are not expected to experience any harmful levels of radioactivity.”
But all weekend, after a series of intense interchanges between Tokyo and Washington and the arrival of the first American nuclear experts in Japan, officials said they were beginning to get a clearer picture of what went wrong over the past three days. And as one senior official put it, “under the best scenarios, this isn’t going to end anytime soon.”
The essential problem is the definition of “off” in a nuclear reactor. When the nuclear chain reaction is stopped and the reactor shuts down, the fuel is still producing about 6 percent as much heat as it did when it was running, caused by continuing radioactivity, the release of subatomic particles and of gamma rays.
Usually when a reactor is first shut down, an electric pump pulls heated water from the vessel to a heat exchanger, and cool water from a river or ocean is brought in to draw off that heat.
But at the Japanese reactors, after losing electric power, that system could not be used. Instead the operators are dumping seawater into the vessel and letting it cool the fuel by boiling. But as it boils, pressure rises too high to pump in more water, so they have to vent the vessel to the atmosphere, and feed in more water, a procedure known as “feed and bleed.”
When the fuel was intact, the steam they were releasing had only modest amounts of radioactive material, in a nontroublesome form. With damaged fuel, that steam is getting dirtier.
CONTINUED...http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2011/03/14/world/14nuclear4_span/14nuclear4_span-ar... more
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