Meet Alexander Filippov
Retired School Teacher, Babichi village, Belarus
Text: Mads Eskesen
Translation: Angela Heath
The story is based on interviews in 2004 and in 2005 by Marianne Barisonek and by Mads Eskesen
”At the moment people only get four hours of lessons in
radioactivity. Who teaches these four hours? It’s usually a general
class teacher, who’s normally not a specialist in the subject. They
can specialise in a million other things: mathematics, biology etc.
There’s a really high degree of ignorance about radioactivity, even
amongst people who have high positions in society. It’s something
that never ceases to surprise me.”
Alexander shows us around the village school where he used to work. The long corridors are painted in bold colours and there are small exhibits and posters made by the pupils. Alexander points out a locked door in a corner, leading to a little room. It used to be the school’s radioactivity laboratory but now that Alexander is retired the room has been locked, the teaching stopped and the equipment removed.
”After Chernobyl I wrote five small books,” Alexander reminisces. ”They were methodological recommendations for the teachers in village schools. The books are about life in villages, farming and radioactivity.”
For many years after the accident nobody in the affected areas knew what they should do in their everyday lives. Courses on radioactivity safety were arranged in the schools, but there were no teaching materials.
Alexander, who at the time was deputy inspector for the village school, contacted the Institute for In-service Training of Teachers in Gomel about collaboration. ”My first brochure was called ’Protect Yourself and Your Country’. It was a book about methods for working in an area with high radioactivity. The last brochure was called ’Smart Agriculture’. It was written in a question and answer format. There are 150 questions and 150 answers. It gives agricultural-ecological explanations about our work in nature, in the forest and in agriculture. It explains how to do things in a particular way. In the first part I give information about what people should do. In the second part there is an explanation of why they should do these things. People need to have some knowledge about this.
Only 300-500 copies were published but there were no other materials for all the villages. The government did not publish anything but Alexander would not comment on why. ”I didn’t want to start a fight. I was diplomatic,” he says.
１−４
He set up an ’ecological centre’ in the little room at the school with apparatus that could measure the content of caesium in foodstuffs. Furthermore he acquired some apparatus to measure nitrates, pH values, potassium and phosphorus. ”It’s important, because if plants contain caesium, strontium and nitrates then they become incredibly dangerous to eat.”
The pupils were involved in identifying the cleanest and the most contaminated zones around the village. Radioactivity was charted on maps of the local forest and fields around the village. By knowing where the invisible pollution was located they could recommend where berries and mushrooms could be gathered safely.
”These were the first results of the milk, berry and mushroom investigation,” says Alexander and brings out some old school posters. ” There is also information about radioactivity in game and fish in reservoirs with stagnant water. Birch tree juice is pure. In the birch tree wood behind the school the ground is contaminated with 4 curies of radiation but the birch tree juice is clean. Why? Because most of the radioactivity is found in the uppermost 15 cm of the soil, while birch tree roots go deeper.”
All our recommendations are geared towards teaching children how to make food safely, how to get ’completely’ clean food from ’relatively’ clean food using technology,” says Alexander of the teaching project.
After Alexander retired there were no other teachers to take over this important area of instruction. ”I can see that teaching in radioactivity is going on as it should in the places where they have some knowledgeable and enthusiastic teachers,” says Alexander. ”But unfortunately there is no system”.
In southern Belarus radioactivity has been a fixed part of everyday life for the last 20 years. So it is surprising that it hasn’t been an obligatory part of the schools’ curriculum over a long period. Alexander thinks that if people in the ministries - or even just the local school inspector - knew more then their knowledge would spread downwards in the orthodox country. ”We obey the law. We do the things we’re expected to do.”
”Our people have a problem. They’re lazy and irresponsible with regard to their health,” Alexander says critically. ”Even young people with babies don’t care about contamination, although they know they shouldn’t eat berries, mushrooms and milk. ’We’ve survived for 20 years and hopefully we’ll live another 20 just fine,’ they say”.
In agriculture attempts are made to prevent radioactivity getting into foodstuffs by spreading calcium, dolomite and potassium on the fields. This serves to block strontium and caesium but, on the other hand, these elements remain in the soil. Alexander is of the opinion that the soil can be completely rid of radioactive elements, but only through the use of plants.
”We conducted an experiment for four years. We took 10 plants from the legume family and sowed them. We measured the radioactivity levels in the soil in the spring and autumn. We were able to measure how much radioactivity was ’sucked’ out per year. At the same time we took measurements from the plants themselves. The conclusion was that many plants ’suck out’ radioactivity. But these are plants that are not economically profitable. For example, lupines are very effective but they become highly poisonous and can’t be used afterwards. You have to bury them in soil that isn’t going to be used. Clover is also effective but it’s a biennial plant and it can’t suck out everything. So we selected a perennial white clover. It sucks out radioactive nuclides and has a number of other advantages. It can survive even if it’s trodden on. It can be eaten and it grows rapidly. All sorts of animals can eat it, it contains a lot of protein and it gives good honey.”
２-４
In a typical Belarusian village there is at least one cow per house. In the mornings the cow is let out onto the road, along with the other cows of the village, for collection by a herdsman who takes the herd to pasture. In the evenings the scene is repeated with hundreds of cows on the road when they are on their way home to be milked.
”We had 300-400 cows in the entire village,” says Alexander. ”But today we don’t have more than 50. Many cows became sick with leucosis, a blood disease similar to leukaemia. They wandered around in the forest where there was a lot of radioactivity. Now there are fewer cows and we have therefore had a clean field allotted. I don’t know whether we had this sort of illness before. Nobody checked the milk then. Perhaps there was some problem but we didn’t check for it. The only sort of check there was on the percentage of fat in the milk.”
Alexander made some calculations of the cows’ problems. Approximately 3⁄4 of the herd used to go into the forest. That was because it led them to yield 11⁄2 to 2 times as much milk. Of the cows that went into the forest 50 % got leucosis and of those that went into the field 15 % got the disease.
”In the forest there is a background radiation of 20-22 micro roentgens per hour – up to 30. But in the soil there is between 1 to 5 curies per km2. Six months ago our area was categorised as a ’region entitled to evacuation’, i.e. an area where there is a level of 5-10 curies of radioactivity per km2. An order from the ministerial council was made public, in which more than 200 villages were declared contaminated at a low level. We therefore became an area with ’periodic control’,” explains Alexander. ”I was surprised that our village was entitled to evacuation when our forest is officially clean. The forest ranger has had absolutely no money in compensation, or ’coffin money’ as we call it”.
In August 2002 the government carried out a new investigation of the contamination and issued an order about reorganising the system with the country’s zones so that people could return to the land. 146 villages were declared ’contaminated at a lower level' than before.
”It’s not about compensation. People have become disorientated,” says Alexander. ”They don’t know anything about this sort of thing. They were told that everything was clean and that it’s fine to live here. But that’s not true!”
”I can certainly tell you how that investigation was conducted here. A radioactivity measurer from the regional centre came here with another from the regional administration who was responsible for the Chernobyl questions. There was also a representative from the office of the Hygiene Board. They went round our sports facilities and took readings of the background radiation. Then they came back to our village, where I met them. They asked me where the most contaminated place in the village was. I invited them to the laboratory where I had my equipment, which we could use to take readings. Then we could investigate where the most contaminated place was. They said to me that we didn’t need to do that because they believed me. And as a result our village kept its old status as a ’highly contaminated place’. All the areas around us were declared clean. There was no one they could ask in those places. 6 kilometres from here there is a village called Golovki, which lies on peat soil. I know that it’s more polluted than our village, but it’s now been declared clean, while ours continues to be regarded as contaminated”.
３−４
Alexander has always lived in a country with problems. The First World War left its mark. Later there was a civil war and then a war with Finland in 1940. During the Second World War Alexander was a young boy. When the area was liberated in 1943 his father went into the army, where he remained until the end of the War.
The family were actually peasant farmers but Alexander wanted to become a gardener and applied for a place at the agricultural college in Grodno. In the post-war years there were many people who received special benefits. For example, orphaned young people and children of invalids could get into university as a matter of course. Alexander had to attend four entrance examinations, but although he achieved the highest grades in three of them and the second highest in the final one he was not awarded a place.
As soon as the military committee heard that he had not been admitted they drafted him into the military. Alexander entered the navy and remained there for five years. In spite of his military training Alexander retained his desire to study. A few months before he was due to end his military service he bought some books and began to study for the entrance examinations again. This time it went well and he was accepted. Times were still hard and there was no money to live on while studying, so Alexander had to study part time and work for the remainder of the time.
In those days one could not simply live wherever one chose and since Alexander came from a small village family it was not easy to obtain a passport and permission to move to the town. So he moved back to his village and although he was very much overqualified he found a job at the village school where he remained ever since.
The inhabitants of the village should be pleased about that. Without a high level of education it can be difficult or almost impossible to understand what radioactivity is. ”It was perhaps easier for me than for the others, because I’m an agronomist,” says Alexander. ”I have an education as a biologist from Minsk and furthermore I have an education in ecology and the rational use of natural resources.”
”The scientists working in the field of radiology are very loyal to the government,” concludes Alexander. ”They produce data which the government wants. They inform us that in general there has been a 34 % drop in the level of radioactivity in the country over the last 14 years. They calculate this based on the half-lives of the elements. They don’t say anything about the fact that when strontium decays americium is produced and that plutonium produces yttrium. These elements are even more dangerous than the original strontium and plutonium. Furthermore, they have a much longer lifetime. On the one hand there is less strontium and plutonium, but on the other hand we don’t hear anything about the new situation.”
”Nobody tells us anything and it’s difficult to prove anything. People die of ordinary illnesses. If they admit that a person dies because of radioactivity then they have to award compensation afterwards. Who wants to do that? That’s why there are no doctors who are allowed to say anything to people about the fact that mortality is related to radioactivity. If someone dies of a weakened heart then that in itself is given as the reason”. http://www.chernobyl-international.org/alexander.html
４-４エンド
地方独占で巨額の利益が保証され、残りの政治家と御用学者を取り込めば、完全犯罪的ビジネス戦略。住民の命よりも利益優先。住民には知る権利もない。東電はまさにアンタッチャブル
****
Thursday, April 7, 2011
Ex-governor blasts Tepco's cozy ties
By JUN HONGO
Staff writer
Earthquakes and tsunami are unavoidable natural events, but the ongoing disaster at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant was induced by "human errors" stemming from cozy ties between bureaucrats and Tokyo Electric Power Co., former Fukushima Gov. Eisaku Sato told The Japan Times on Wednesday.
Sato, who served five terms from 1988 to 2006, said the inappropriate relationship between government bureaus and the utility often resulted in them burying major troubles, including cracks in reactors and safety shortcomings at Tepco's two nuclear plants in the prefecture.
"Their improper bond means that no one was keeping an eye on Tepco," Sato, 71, said, adding it ultimately led to the inadequate preparations for the March 11 disaster.
The first hint Sato had of inept supervision at the nuclear plants was in January 1989. Tepco, despite being aware for weeks that one of the reactor coolant pumps at the Fukushima No. 2 nuclear plant was malfunctioning, did not report the trouble to prefectural authorities.
Sato said he quickly filed a complaint with the old Ministry of International Trade and Industry over a development he felt endangered the public. But Tepco only received a slap on the wrist and the power plant was back up and running after a temporary shutdown.
Sato was prompted to take further action in 2002, when a whistle-blower claimed Tepco was hiding malfunctions and cracks in reactors at both Fukushima No. 1 and No. 2.
"It turned out that the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency had received the same insider information — but in 2000, two years before we did," Sato said. And yet the nuclear safety watchdog, under the wing of MITI's successor, the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, not only overlooked the accusation and failed to inform prefectural authorities, it even gave Tepco a heads up.
A NISA official told The Japan Times that at the time, such tips were handled by the Agency for Natural Resources and Energy. "There were some mistakes in how to handle the matter, and I've heard that the tip was actually passed on to Tepco," he acknowledged.
The incident resulted in the resignation of some Tepco executives and a temporary shutdown of all 17 of its nuclear reactors. But no one from METI took responsibility.
"That's when I learned that METI, NISA and Tepco were all part of the same gang," Sato said, adding this prompted him to set up an office in the prefectural government to handle tips from insiders regarding the nuclear plants.
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From 2002 until Sato's resignation as governor, the team received 21 anonymous tips. "It was mostly a cry for help," Sato said. Some whistle-blowers complained about a wrecked turbine that went unreported. Others warned of the lack of safety on-site measures.
"The tsunami danger was obviously an issue on the table," Sato said, stressing seismologists were pointing to past evidence of mega-earthquakes that could prove catastrophic. "But you have to ask how serious NISA was doing its job, considering the way that backup electricity was easily knocked out by the waves."
Following March 11, there is finally talk of separating NISA from METI to keep Tepco on a short leash. But Sato said an overhaul of the system and new safety measures will be required before evacuees can safely return home.
"There is a nightmare going on in the evacuation camps," Sato said. "Separating NISA and METI is just the first step — overhauling Tepco's operations and supervision is necessary."
Sato resigned in 2006 and was handed a suspended prison term in 2008 by the Tokyo District Court in connection with a bribery case involving a public works project. That verdict was upheld in 2009 and he has appealed with the Supreme Court.
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国の放射線被爆限度基準の引き上げに対する現場作業員を雇う企業側の反応
Sunday, April 10, 2011
Companies nix higher radiation dose limit
Kyodo News
Companies dispatching workers to the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant are refusing to enforce the government's raised limit on radiation exposure, saying it would not be accepted by their workers, it was learned Saturday.
The limit was increased from 100 millisieverts to 250 millisieverts in a March 15 announcement by the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry.
The increase was requested by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry to enable workers to work longer hours and to secure more employees who meet the requirement.
The ministry's decision was made after consulting with the Radiation Council, a body under the science ministry.
But the companies say they are sticking to the previous, lower, limit.
According to Tokyo Electric Power Co., 21 workers had been exposed to a cumulative dose exceeding 100 millisieverts as of April 1. On March 24, three workers — two from Tepco affiliate Kandenko Co. and another from a subcontractor — were exposed to high doses of radiation while laying cables in the basement of reactor 3's turbine building.
"The workers on-site would not agree to accept the suddenly raised" limit, a public relations official at Kandenko said. "We have to be prudent. In view of the workers' safety, we will maintain the 100 millisievert limit."
An official at Tokyo Energy & Systems Inc., a Tepco subsidiary, said: "The target rate at the site is 100 millisieverts. But in practice, we have set a lower limit of 80 millisieverts to control radiation exposure."
Construction companies Kajima Corp. and Taisei Corp. have also adopted 100 millisieverts as their yardstick.
Hitachi Ltd., however, has adopted "200 millisieverts under an in-house regulation," a public relations official said.
Tepco has been complying with the higher limit, but in recent days it was disclosed that not all its workers were using radiation monitors due to a shortage of units equipped with alarms.
グリーンピース（非政府団体）の
放射線医学専門家グループが行った現地調査と
それに基づいたアドバイスに耳をかさない日本政府
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
High radiation well past no-go zone: Greenpeace
By JUN HONGO
Staff writer
Radiology experts from Greenpeace urged the government to revise their evacuation protocol Monday after they found high levels of radiation around the greater Fukushima area and in the region's fresh produce.
A team of radiologists and safety advisers of the nongovernmental organization said a survey conducted from April 4 through Sunday detected radiation levels of 4 microsieverts per hour at a playground in the city of Fukushima. That would translate into a potential annual exposure of 5 millisieverts, Greenpeace expert Rianne Teule said, explaining that the level was the threshold for evacuation at Chernobyl.
The group also said that all 11 samples of local vegetables from gardens and small farms within the prefecture contained radioactivity exceeding the legal limit of 2,000 becquerels per kilogram set by the farm ministry. For example, 152,340 becquerels were found in spinach from a small patch on the outskirts of the city of Fukushima, the group said.
"This is 75 times higher than the limit by the government," Teule told a news conference at the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan in Tokyo.
Most leafy vegetables from Fukushima Prefecture have been banned from circulation since March 21, but some are being sold directly to consumers from local farmers. The government should provide more information to local residents, the NGO warned.
Radiologist Jan van de Putte told the same news conference that areas with high levels of radioactivity were concentrated in northwestern Fukushima Prefecture, especially in areas between the villages of Iitate and Tsushima, which registered 48 microsieverts per hour.
"This is really dangerous and a very high level," van de Putte said.
Considering the 4 microsieverts detected at a playground in the heart of the city of Fukushima — which has a population of 300,000 — van de Putte and Greenpeace urged the government postpone the start of the school year until decontamination is complete and safety is confirmed.
Greenpeace began surveying areas affected by the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant crisis and revealed late last month that a sample taken on a road between the villages of Iitate and Tsushima had a radiation level of 100 microsieverts per hour, despite being outside the evacuation area.
That survey, however, was downplayed last month by the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, which claimed the results "could not be considered reliable." Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said separately he will ask Greenpeace to provide more details.
"We've been very cooperative (with the government) and have been providing all the data that we gathered," Junichi Sato, executive director of Greenpeace Japan, said Monday.
"But although we have been handing everything to the prime minister's office, they are not giving us any response."
アメリカ医療専門家の非営利団体（ＰＳＲ）が日本政府を非難。
Monday, May 2, 2011
U.S. doctors hit Tokyo radiation limit for kids
Kyodo
Physicians for Social Responsibility, a U.S. nonprofit organization of medical experts, has condemned as "unconscionable" the Japanese government's safety standards on radiation levels at elementary and junior high schools in nuclear disaster-stricken Fukushima Prefecture.
The PSR statement directly challenges Tokyo's stance that it is safe for schoolchildren to use school playgrounds in the prefecture as long as the dose they are exposed to does not exceed 20 millisieverts over a year.
The PSR view is also in line with that voiced by Toshiso Kosako, who said Friday he would step down as an adviser to Prime Minister Naoto Kan on the Fukushima nuclear crisis in protest. The University of Tokyo professor urged the government to toughen guidelines on upper limits on radiation levels the education ministry recently announced for elementary school playgrounds in Fukushima.
The U.S. group said in a statement released Friday, "Any exposure, including exposure to naturally occurring background radiation, creates an increased risk of cancer.
"Children are much more vulnerable than adults to the effects of radiation, and fetuses are even more vulnerable," it said.
The medical experts group is part of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, which won the 1985 Nobel Peace Prize.
"(Twenty millisieverts) for children exposes them to a 1 in 200 risk of getting cancer. And if they are exposed to this dose for two years, the risk is 1 in 100. There is no way that this level of exposure can be considered 'safe' for children," the statement said.
他の産業から比べても東電社員はひとも羨む高給取りという事実を知れば、
その翼下で働く人間には、その恩恵はちっとも無いのかな。
*****
Sunday, May 15, 2011
Tepco says no signs of harmful radiation levels
Worker at Fukushima nuclear plant dies
Kyodo
A worker at the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant died Saturday after collapsing while carrying equipment at a waste disposal building, Tokyo Electric Power Co. said.
Water work: Cooling system gear is unloaded at the Fukushima No. 1 plant Friday. TEPCO / KYODO PHOTO
The cause of death wasn't immediately known, but Tepco said no radioactive substances were detected on his body.
The worker, whose name was not released, was in his 60s and did not appear to be injured, the utility said.
The death is the third at the plant since the crisis began. The bodies of two workers who disappeared March 11 were found floating in the basement of reactor 4 later that month, having died from injuries sustained on the day of the disaster.
The man had started working at the plant Friday and was wearing protective gear, including a full face mask, at the time of his collapse, Tepco said.
He was exposed to radiation totaling 0.17 millisievert — a level considered to have little effect on health — while no radioactive substances were detected on his body, the utility said.
The man, who was working for a subcontractor, collapsed about one hour after he began working at 6 a.m. with another worker at the waste disposal processing facility. He fell unconscious when he was taken to a medical room inside the plant after 7 a.m., Tepco said.
The other worker has not complained of any health problems.
Apart from radiation, workers at the plant are facing serious health threats ranging from poor meals to mental stress.
It took until May 4 for Tepco to say it would improve the workers' meals by replacing precooked, packaged food with "bento" boxes.
In addition, workers on the frontline have no doctors to provide emergency care. Medical staffers are on standby at the J-Village training center in the town of Naraha, some 20 km from the plant.
Tepco has said it will improve the work environment.
It has already been criticized for its poor treatment of nuclear workers, most of whom are employees of subcontractors.
After the plant was hit by the March disaster, workers were initially given no radiation meters on the grounds they were washed away by the tsunami.
Tepco improved the situation only after the government nuclear watchdog agency urged the utility to take steps.
But later in March, three workers were irradiated in a contaminated puddle of water while working in the underground level of the reactor 3 building.
Then came a recent revelation that a daily laborer in Osaka who applied to a job as a driver in Miyagi Prefecture ended up as a nuclear worker at the Fukushima plant.
The worker's death came as the utility continued Saturday work to install a new cooling system at the No. 1 plant, where much of the fuel in the core has melted after being fully exposed.
福島原発事故が世界の原発政策を変える。
Germany decides to shut down all nuclear power plants by 2022 in the wake of Fukushima
Juergen Baetz, Associated Press, May 30, 2011, 3:15 pm EDT
BERLIN (AP) -- Europe's economic powerhouse, Germany, announced plans Monday to abandon nuclear energy over the next 11 years, outlining an ambitious strategy in the wake of Japan's Fukushima disaster to replace atomic power with renewable energy sources.
Chancellor Angela Merkel said she hopes the transformation to more solar, wind and hydroelectric power serves as a roadmap for other countries.
"We believe that we can show those countries who decide to abandon nuclear power -- or not to start using it -- how it is possible to achieve growth, creating jobs and economic prosperity while shifting the energy supply toward renewable energies," Merkel said.
Merkel's government said it will shut down all 17 nuclear power plants in Germany -- the world's fourth-largest economy and Europe's biggest -- by 2022. The government had no immediate estimate of the transition's overall cost.
The plan sets Germany apart from most of the other major industrialized nations. Among the other Group of Eight countries, only Italy has abandoned nuclear power, which was voted down in a referendum after the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.
The decision represents a remarkable about-face for Merkel's center-right government, which only late last year pushed through a plan to extend the life span of the country's reactors, with the last scheduled to go offline around 2036. But Merkel, who holds a Ph.D. in physics, said industrialized, technologically advanced Japan's "helplessness" in the face of the Fukushima disaster made her rethink the technology's risks.
Phasing out nuclear power within a decade will be a challenge, but it will be feasible and ultimately give Germany a competitive advantage in the renewable energy era, Merkel said.
"As the first big industrialized nation, we can achieve such a transformation toward efficient and renewable energies, with all the opportunities that brings for exports, developing new technologies and jobs," Merkel told reporters.
The government said the renewable energy sector already employs about 370,000 people.
Germany's seven oldest reactors, already taken off the grid pending safety inspections following the March catastrophe at Japan's Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant, will remain offline permanently, Merkel said. The plants accounted for about 40 percent of the country's nuclear power capacity.
At the time of the Japanese disaster, Germany got just under a quarter of its electricity from nuclear power, about the same share as in the U.S.
While Germany already was set to abandon nuclear energy eventually, the decision -- which still requires parliamentary approval -- dramatically speeds up that process. Environment Minister Norbert Roettgen said there are no provisions that would allow a later policy reverse.
"We don't only want to renounce nuclear energy by 2022, we also want to reduce our CO2 emissions by 40 percent and double our share of renewable energies, from about 17 percent today to then 35 percent," the chancellor said.
Merkel said the cornerstones of Germany's energy policy will also include a safe and steady power supply that doesn't rely on imports, and affordable prices for industry and consumers. The plan calls for more investment in natural gas plants as a backup to prevent blackouts, the chancellor said.
1-2
Germany's initiative received a skeptical reception abroad.
French Prime Minister Francois Fillon, whose country relies on nuclear power to produce 80 percent of its electricity supply, insisted "there's no way" for the European Union to meet its emission-cutting targets without at least some nuclear power.
"We respect this decision, but it doesn't cause us to change our policy," Fillon said. France operates more than one-third of the nuclear reactors in the EU.
Sweden's Environment Minister Andreas Carlgren also criticized the German decision, telling The Associated Press that the focus on an end date was unfortunate and could drive up electricity prices across Europe.
Germany, usually a net energy exporter, has at times had to import energy since March, with the seven old reactors shut and others temporarily off the grid for regular maintenance. Still, the agency overseeing its electricity grid, DENA, said Friday that the country remains self-sufficient and that its renewable energy production capacity this spring peaked at 28 gigawatts -- or about the equivalent of 28 nuclear reactors.
Many Germans have vehemently opposed nuclear power since Chernobyl sent radioactivity over the country. Tens of thousands of people took to the streets after Fukushima to urge the government to shut all reactors quickly.
A decade ago, a center-left government drew up a plan to abandon the technology for good by 2021 because of its risks. But Merkel's government last year amended it to extend the plants' lifetime by an average 12 years -- a political liability after Fukushima was hit by Japan's March 11 earthquake and tsunami.
Environmental groups welcomed Berlin's decision.
"The country is throwing its weight behind clean renewable energy to power its manufacturing base and other countries like Britain should take note," said Robin Oakley, Greenpeace UK's campaigns director.
German industry said the government must not allow the policy changes to lead to an unstable power supply or rising electricity prices.
Hans-Peter Keitel, the president of the Federation of German Industries, urged the government not to set the exit date of 2022 in stone but to be flexible if problems arise.
Switzerland, where nuclear power produces 40 percent of electricity, also announced last week that it plans to shut down its reactors gradually once they reach their average life span of 50 years -- which would mean taking the last plant off the grid in 2034.
Germany's decision broadly follows the conclusions of a government-mandated commission on the ethics of nuclear power, which on Saturday delivered recommendations on how to abolish the technology.
"Fukushima was a dramatic experience, seeing there that a high-technology nation can't cope with such a catastrophe," Matthias Kleiner, the commission's co-chairman, said Monday. "Nuclear power is a technology with too many inherent risks to inflict it on us or our children."
Geir Moulson in Berlin, Malin Rising in Stockholm, Colleen Barry in Milan, Jamey Keaten in Paris and Cassandra Vinograd in London contributed reporting.
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いまだに終わりが見えない福島原発危機
Sunday, June 5, 2011
Lethal four-sievert reading taken by robot; suppression chamber suspect
Radiation in No. 1 reactor building at highest level yet
Kyodo, AP
Tokyo Electric Power Co. said Saturday it has detected radiation of up to 4,000 millisieverts per hour in the building housing the No. 1 reactor at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant.
Where there's smoke: A video image from the Fukushima No. 1 power plant shows steam rising from an opening in the floor of the No. 1 reactor building Friday. TEPCO / AP
The radiation reading, which was taken when Tepco sent a robot into the No. 1 reactor building on Friday, is believed to be the highest detected in the air at the plant so far.
On Friday, Tepco found steam spewing from the basement into the building's first floor. Nationally televised news Saturday showed blurry video of a steady stream of smoky gas curling up from an opening where a pipe rises through the floor.
The radiation is so high now that any worker exposed to it would absorb the maximum permissible dose of 250 millisieverts in only about four minutes. Tepco said there is no plan to place workers in that area of the plant and said it will carefully monitor any developments.
The utility said it took the reading near the floor at the southeast corner of the building. The steam appears to be entering from a leaking rubber gasket that is supposed to seal the area where the pipe comes up through the first floor. No damage to the pipe was found, Tepco said.
The reactor's suppression chamber is under the building, and highly radioactive water generated from cooling the reactor is believed to have accumulated there, Tepco said, adding that the steam is probably coming from there.
Meanwhile, tanks for storing radioactive water were on their way Saturday to the plant.
Tepco has said radioactive water could start overflowing from temporary storage areas on June 20, or possibly sooner if there is heavy rainfall.
Two of the 370 tanks were due to arrive Saturday from a manufacturer in nearby Tochigi Prefecture, Tepco said. Two hundred of them can store 100 tons, and 170 can store 120 tons.
The tanks will continue arriving through August and will store a total of 40,000 tons of radioactive water, according to Tepco.
Workers have been fighting to get the plant under control since the March 11 tsunami knocked out power, destroyed backup generators and halted the crucial cooling systems for the reactors, causing the world's worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl in 1986. Several explosions have scattered radioactive debris around the plant, and reactors are spewing radiation into the air and leaking it into the sea.
On Friday, nine workers who entered the building to attach a pressure gauge to the pressure vessel of reactor No. 1 were exposed to around 4 millisieverts of radiation, according to Tepco.
The fuel rods are believed to have melted almost completely and sunk to the bottom of the containment vessels of reactors 1, 2 and 3.
A complete meltdown would have seen the fuel melt entirely through the containment vessels and into the reactor floor.
約１・７キロの福島県大熊町でプルトニウム
Monday, June 6, 2011
Plutonium found in soil at Okuma
Kyodo
Plutonium that is believed to have come from the crippled Fukushima No. 1 power plant has been detected in the town of Okuma about 1.7 km away from the plant's front gate, a Kanazawa University researcher said Sunday.
It is the first time plutonium ejected by the stricken facility has been found in soil beyond its premises since the March 11 megaquake and tsunami led to a core meltdown there.
Professor Masayoshi Yamamoto of Kanazawa University said the level of plutonium detected in soil in Okuma, Fukushima Prefecture, is lower than the average level observed in Japan after nuclear tests were conducted abroad.
The Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Ministry has found plutonium in soil on the nuke plant's grounds, but it was believed to have been fallout from bomb tests abroad.
By analyzing the ratio of three types of isotopes in the plutonium, Yamamoto was able to determine that it was emitted by Fukushima No. 1 and not past bomb tests.
The soil samples were collected by a team of researchers from Hokkaido University before April 22.
AREVA is a French public multinational industrial conglomerate headquartered in the Tour Areva in Courbevoie, Paris. AREVA is mainly known for nuclear power.
Radioactive beef sold off in eight prefectures
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
By TAKAHIRO FUKADA Staff writer
Meat from six cows contaminated with radioactive materials from the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant may have reached consumers in eight prefectures, including Tokyo, Kanagawa and Osaka, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government said Wednesday.
The other five prefectures are Aichi, Hokkaido, Tokushima, Kochi and Shizuoka.
Most of the prefectural governments, however, refused to disclose the names of retailers or even the cities where the meat was sold to shoppers.
"For the meat that was already sold and consumed, there is no particular necessity to worry about the health impact if (the amount individuals consume is limited)," Tatsuo Suzuki, a metropolitan government official, said at a news conference.
"There is no need for us to caution people" about the potential danger of consumption, he said, explaining that the metropolitan government has no intention of disclosing the name of any store that sold the meat.
Responding to inquiries by The Japan Times, four prefectural governments gave some more details about where the meat ended up.
Tokushima Prefecture said a Fuji GRAND supermarket in the city of Anan sold all 8.8 kg of the meat it procured from a wholesaler.
In Aichi, a barbecue restaurant in Ama whose name is being withheld sold 3.15 kg of the meat to consumers, according to the Tokyo Metropolitan and Aichi Prefectural governments.
In Hokkaido, an "izakaya" bar and barbeque restaurant in Chitose sold customers 3 kg, the Tokyo and Hokkaido governments said.
In Shizuoka, a retailer in Makinohara sold 14.5 kg to consumers.
American Citizen Services
Travel Alert - Japan (Oct. 7)
This Travel Alert updates the Travel Alert for Japan dated July 19, 2011, to note modifications to U.S. government recommendations for U.S. citizens traveling to or residing in the area around the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. This Travel Alert expires on Jan. 13, 2012.
Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant
Agencies of the U.S. government continue to review the conditions at and around the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant and the measures taken by the Government of Japan. Additional data are now available from Japanese authorities, allowing for a fuller assessment by U.S. government scientists.
Areas We Recommend U.S. Citizens Avoid
Based on current data from Japan, we recommend that U.S. citizens avoid all areas within 20 km of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant. In addition, U.S. citizens should avoid the area northwest of the plant that the Government of Japan has designated as the "Deliberate Evacuation Area." This oblong area in a northwestern direction from the power plant covers Iitate-mura, the Yamagiya district of Kawamata-machi, Katsurao-mura, Namie-machi and parts of Minamisoma.
U.S. citizens should also avoid all "Specific Spots Recommended for Evacuation" by the Government of Japan. U.S. citizens who are still within any of these areas should evacuate. Government of Japan maps and information on evacuation areas may be found at online here.
Other Areas Within 80km of Fukushima Daiichi Plant
Temporary Visitors: Government of Japan data measurements show varying levels of radiation in land areas outside of the area described above, but within 80 km of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant. The U.S. government believes the health and safety risks to temporary visitors to these areas are low and exposure does not pose significant risks to U.S. citizens making visits of less than one year. We recommend U.S. citizens contemplating travel to these areas consult with Japanese authorities regarding local conditions at the proposed destination.
Long-term Residents: The risks may be higher for U.S. citizens who reside for more than one year within 80 km of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant. Out of an abundance of caution, we recommend that U.S. citizens who choose to reside for more than one year within 80 km of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant consult with local authorities to receive current guidance on expected levels of radiation and recommendations for reducing exposure to radiation. In addition, pregnant women, children, and the elderly should avoid residing within 30 km of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant.
今回の原発事故は政府の原発行政や東京電力の安全性に対する甘さが引き起こした人災。取りかえしのない事故が起こってから、それを予防するはずだった安全性への処置を無視や見落としことが数々指摘されている。皆でやれば怖くない。連帯で安全性を長い間ほったらかしてきたのだから、高給は取るが、誰といって責任を取る必要もない。頭を下げて謝れば、国民は同じ穴のむじなとして、納得してくれる。日本の過去がそう教えてくれる。
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Special Report: Japan engineers knew tsunami could overrun plant
By Kevin Krolicki, Scott DiSavino and Taro Fuse
Tue Mar 29, 2011 11:45pm EDT
TOKYO (Reuters) - Over the past two weeks, Japanese government officials and Tokyo Electric Power executives have repeatedly described the deadly combination of the most powerful quake in Japan's history and the massive tsunami that followed as "soteigai," or beyond expectations.
When Tokyo Electric President Masataka Shimizu apologized to the people of Japan for the continuing crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant he called the double disaster "marvels of nature that we have never experienced before".
But a review of company and regulatory records shows that Japan and its largest utility repeatedly downplayed dangers and ignored warnings -- including a 2007 tsunami study from Tokyo Electric Power Co's senior safety engineer.
"We still have the possibilities that the tsunami height exceeds the determined design height due to the uncertainties regarding the tsunami phenomenon," Tokyo Electric researchers said in a report reviewed by Reuters.
The research paper concluded that there was a roughly 10 percent chance that a tsunami could test or overrun the defenses of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant within a 50-year span based on the most conservative assumptions.
But Tokyo Electric did nothing to change its safety planning based on that study, which was presented at a nuclear engineering conference in Miami in July 2007.
Meanwhile, Japanese nuclear regulators clung to a model that left crucial safety decisions in the hands of the utility that ran the plant, according to regulatory records, officials and outside experts.
Among examples of the failed opportunities to prepare for disaster, Japanese nuclear regulators never demanded that Tokyo Electric reassess its fundamental assumptions about earthquake and tsunami risk for a nuclear plant built more than four decades ago. In the 1990s, officials urged but did not require that Tokyo Electric and other utilities shore up their system of plant monitoring in the event of a crisis, the record shows.
Even though Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, (NISA) one of the three government bodies charged with nuclear safety, cataloged the damage to nuclear plant vent systems from an earlier earthquake, it did not require those to be protected against future disasters or hardened against explosions.
That marked a sharp break with safety practices put in place in the United States in the 1980s after Three Mile Island, even though Japan modeled its regulation on U.S. precedents and even allowed utilities to use American disaster manuals in some cases.
Ultimately, when the wave was crashing in, everything came down to the ability of Tokyo Electric's front-line workers to carry out disaster plans under intense pressure.
But even in normal operations, the regulatory record shows Tokyo Electric had been cited for more dangerous operator errors over the past five years than any other utility. In a separate 2008 case, it admitted that a 17-year-old worker had been hired illegally as part of a safety inspection at Fukushima Daiichi.
"It's a bit strange for me that we have officials saying this was outside expectations," said Hideaki Shiroyama, a professor at the University of Tokyo who has studied nuclear safety policy. "Unexpected things can happen. That's the world we live in."
He added: "Both the regulators and TEPCO are trying to avoid responsibility."
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Najmedin Meshkati, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Southern California, said the government's approach of relying heavily on Tokyo Electric to do the right thing largely on its own had clearly failed.
"The Japanese government is receiving some advice, but they are relying on the already badly stretched resources of TEPCO to handle this," said Meshkati, a researcher of the Chernobyl disaster who has been critical of the company's safety record before. "Time is not on our side."
The revelation that Tokyo Electric had put a number to the possibility of a tsunami beyond the designed strength of its Fukushima nuclear plant comes at a time when investor confidence in the utility is in fast retreat.
Shares in the world's largest private utility have lost almost three-fourth of their value -- $30 billion -- since the March 11 earthquake pushed the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant into crisis. Analysts see a chance the utility will be nationalized by the Japanese government in the face of mounting liability claims and growing public frustration.
AN 'EXTREMELY LOW' RISK
The tsunami research presented by a Tokyo Electric team led by Toshiaki Sakai came on the first day of a three-day conference in July 2007 organized by the International Conference on Nuclear Engineering.
It represented the product of several years of work at Japan's top utility, prompted by the 2004 earthquake off the coast of Sumatra that had shaken the industry's accepted wisdom. In that disaster, the tsunami that hit Indonesia and a dozen other countries around the Indian Ocean also flooded a nuclear power plant in southern India. That raised concerns in Tokyo about the risk to Japan's 55 nuclear plants, many exposed to the dangerous coast in order to have quick access to water for cooling.
Tokyo Electric's Fukushima Daiichi plant, some 240 km (150 miles) northeast of Tokyo, was a particular concern.
The 40-year-old nuclear complex was built near a quake zone in the Pacific that had produced earthquakes of magnitude 8 or higher four times in the past 400 years -- in 1896, 1793, 1677 and then in 1611, Tokyo Electric researchers had come to understand.
Based on that history, Sakai, a senior safety manager at Tokyo Electric, and his research team applied new science to a simple question: What was the chance that an earthquake-generated wave would hit Fukushima? More pressing, what were the odds that it would be larger than the roughly 6-meter (20 feet) wall of water the plant had been designed to handle?
The tsunami that crashed through the Fukushima plant on March 11 was 14 meters high.
Sakai's team determined the Fukushima plant was dead certain to be hit by a tsunami of one or two meters in a 50-year period. They put the risk of a wave of 6 meters or more at around 10 percent over the same time span.
In other words, Tokyo Electric scientists realized as early as 2007 that it was quite possible a giant wave would overwhelm the sea walls and other defenses at Fukushima by surpassing engineering assumptions behind the plant's design that date back to the 1960s.
Company Vice President Sakae Muto said the utility had built its Fukushima nuclear power plant "with a margin for error" based on its assessment of the largest waves to hit the site in the past.
That would have included the magnitude 9.5 Chile earthquake in 1960 that killed 140 in Japan and generated a wave estimated at near 6 meters, roughly in line with the plans for Fukushima Daiichi a decade later.
"It's been pointed out by some that there could be a bigger tsunami than we had planned for, but my understanding of the situation is that there was no consensus among the experts," Muto said in response to a question from Reuters.
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Despite the projection by its own safety engineers that the older assumptions might be mistaken, Tokyo Electric was not breaking any Japanese nuclear safety regulation by its failure to use its new research to fortify Fukushima Daiichi, which was built on the rural Pacific coast to give it quick access to sea water and keep it away from population centers.
"There are no legal requirements to re-evaluate site related (safety) features periodically," the Japanese government said in a response to questions from the United Nations nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, in 2008.
In fact, in safety guidelines issued over the past 20 years, Japanese nuclear safety regulators had all but written off the risk of a severe accident that would test the vaunted safety standards of one of their 55 nuclear reactors, a key pillar of the nation's energy and export policies.
That has left planning for a strategy to head off runaway meltdown in the worst case scenarios to Tokyo Electric in the belief that the utility was best placed to handle any such crisis, according to published regulations.
In December 2010, for example, Japan's Nuclear Safety Commission said the risk for a severe accident was "extremely low" at reactors like those in operation at Fukushima. The question of how to prepare for those scenarios would be left to utilities, the commission said.
A 1992 policy guideline by the NSC also concluded core damage at one of Japan's reactors severe enough to release radiation would be an event with a probability of once in 185 years. So with such a limited risk of happening, the best policy, the guidelines say, is to leave emergency response planning to Tokyo electric and other plant operators.
PREVENTION NOT CURE
Over the past 20 years, nuclear operators and regulators in Europe and the United States have taken a new approach to managing risk. Rather than simple defenses against failures, researchers have examined worst-case outcomes to test their assumptions, and then required plants to make changes.
They have looked especially at the chance that a single calamity could wipe out an operator's main defense and its backup, just as the earthquake and tsunami did when the double disaster took out the main power and backup electricity to Fukushima Daiichi.
Japanese nuclear safety regulators have been slow to embrace those changes.
Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA), one of three government bodies with responsibility for safety policy and inspections, had published guidelines in 2005 and 2006 based on the advances in regulation elsewhere but did not insist on their application.
"Since, in Japanese safety regulation, the application of risk information is scarce in experience (the) guidelines are in trial use," the NISA said.
Japanese regulators and Tokyo Electric instead put more emphasis on regular maintenance and programs designed to catch flaws in the components of their aging plants.
That was the thinking behind extending the life of the No. 1 reactor at Fukushima Daiichi, which had been scheduled to go out of commission in February after a 40-year run.
But shutting down the reactor would have made it much more difficult for Japan to reach its target of deriving half of its total generation of electricity from nuclear power by 2030 -- or almost double its share in 2007.
The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) figured it could reach the target by building at least 14 new nuclear plants, and running existing plants harder and longer. Fukushima's No. 1 reactor was given a 10-year extension after Tokyo Electric submitted a maintenance plan.
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Safety regulators, who also belong to METI, did not require Tokyo Electric to rethink the fundamental safety assumptions behind the plant. The utility only had to insure the reactor's component parts were not being worn down dangerously, according to a 2009 presentation by the utility's senior maintenance engineer.
That kind of thinking -- looking at potential problems with components without seeing the risk to the overall plant -- was evident in the way that Japanese officials responded to trouble with backup generators at a nuclear reactor even before the tsunami.
On four occasions over the past four years, safety inspectors from Japan and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) were called in to review failures with backup diesel generators at nuclear plants.
In June 2007, an inspector was dispatched to Fukushima's No. 4 reactor, where the backup generator had caught fire after a circuit breaker was installed improperly, according to the inspector's report.
"There is no need of providing feedback to other plants for the reason that no similar event could occur," the June 2007 inspection concluded.
The installation had met its safety target. Nothing in that report or any other shows safety inspectors questioned the placement of the generators on low ground near the shore where they proved to be at highest risk for tsunami damage at Fukushima Daiichi.
"GET OUT, GET OUT"
Japanese nuclear regulators have handed primary responsibility for dealing with nuclear plant emergencies to the utilities themselves. But that hinges on their ability to carry them out in an actual crisis, and the record shows that working in a nuclear reactor has been a dangerous and stressful job in Japan even under routine conditions.
Inspectors with Japan's Nuclear Energy Safety Organization have recorded 18 safety lapses at Tokyo Electric's 17 nuclear plants since 2005. Ten of them were attributed to mistakes by staff and repairmen.
They included failures to follow established maintenance procedures and failures to perform prescribed safety checks. Even so, Toyko Electric was left on its own to set standards for nuclear plant staff certification, a position some IAEA officials had questioned in 2008.
In March 2004, two workers in Tokyo Electric's Fukushima Daini plant passed out when the oxygen masks they were using - originally designed for use on an airplane - began leaking and allowed nitrogen to seep into their air supply.
The risks also appear to have made it hard to hire for key positions. In 2008, Toshiba admitted it had illegally used six employees under the age of 18 as part of a series of inspections of nuclear power plants at Tokyo Electric and Tohoku Electric. One of those minors, then aged 17, had participated in an inspection of the Fukushima Daiichi No. 5 reactor, Tokyo Electric said then.
The magnitude 9.0 quake struck on Friday afternoon of March 11 -- the most powerful in Japan's long history of them -- pushed workers at the Fukushima plant to the breaking point as injuries mounted and panic took hold.
Hiroyuki Nishi, a subcontractor who had been moving scaffolding inside Reactor No. 3 when the quake hit, described a scene of chaos as a massive hook came crashing down next to him. "People were shouting 'Get out, get out!'" Nishi said. "Everyone was screaming."
In the pandemonium, workers pleaded to be let out, knowing a tsunami was soon to come. But Tokyo Electric supervisors appealed for calm, saying each worker had to be tested first for radiation exposure. Eventually, the supervisors relented, threw open the doors to the plant and the contractors scrambled for high ground just ahead of the tsunami.
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After the wave receded, two employee were missing, apparently washed away while working on unit No. 4. Two contractors were treated for leg fractures and two others were treated for slight injuries. A ninth worker was being treated for a stroke.
In the chaos of the early response, workers did not notice when the diesel pumps at No. 2 ran out of fuel, allowing water levels to fall and fuel to become exposed and overheat. When the Fukushima plant suffered its second hydrogen blast in three days the following Monday, Tokyo electric executives only notified the prime minister's office an hour later. Seven workers had been injured in the explosion along with four soldiers.
An enraged Prime Minister Naoto Kan pulled up to Tokyo Electric's headquarters the next morning before dawn. "What the hell is going on?" reporters outside the closed-door discussion reported hearing Kan demand angrily of senior executives.
Errors of judgment by workers in the hot zone and errors of calculation by plant managers hampered the emergency response a full week later as some 600 soldiers and workers struggled to contain the spread of radiation.
On Thursday, two workers at Fukushima were shuttled to the hospital to be treated for potential radiation burns after wading in water in the turbine building of reactor No. 3. The workers had ignored their radiation alarms thinking they were broken.
Then Tokyo electric officials pulled workers back from an effort to pump water out of the No. 2 reactor and reported that radiation readings were 10 million times normal. They later apologized, saying that reading was wrong. The actual reading was still 100,000 times normal, Tokyo Electric said.
The government's chief spokesman was withering in his assessment. "The radiation readings are an important part of a number of important steps we're taking to protect safety," Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano told reporters. "There is no excuse for getting them wrong."
VENTS AND GAUGES
Although U.S. nuclear plant operators were required to install "hardened" vent systems in the 1980s after the Three Mile Island incident, Japan's Nuclear Safety Commission rejected the need to require such systems in 1992, saying that should be left to the plant operators to decide.
A nuclear power plant's vent represents one of the last resorts for operators struggling to keep a reactor from pressure that could to blow the building that houses it apart and spread radiation, which is what happened at Chernobyl 25 years ago. A hardened vent in a U.S. plant is designed to behave like the barrel on a rifle, strong enough to withstand an explosive force from within.
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission concluded in the late 1980s that the General Electric designed Mark I reactors, like those used at Fukushima, required safety modifications.
The risks they flagged, and that Tokyo did not heed, would come back to haunt Japan in the Fukushima crisis.
First, U.S. researchers concluded that a loss of power at one of the nuclear plants would be one of the "dominant contributors" to the most severe accidents. Flooding of the reactor building would worsen the risks. The NRC also required U.S. plants to install "hard pipe" after concluding the sheet-metal ducts used in Japan could make things much worse.
"Venting via a sheet metal duct system could result in a reactor building hydrogen burn," researchers said in a report published in November 1988.
In the current crisis, the failure of the more vulnerable duct vents in Fukushima's No. 1 and No. 3 reactors may have contributed to the hydrogen explosions that blew the roof off the first and left the second a tangled hulk of steel beams in the first three days of the crisis.
The plant vents, which connect to the big smokestack-like towers, appear to have been damaged in the quake or the tsunami, one NISA official said.
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Even without damage, opening the vulnerable vents in the presence of a build-up of hydrogen gas was a known danger. In the case of Fukushima, opening the vents to relieve pressure was like turning on an acetylene torch and then watching the flame "shoot back into the fuel tank," said one expert with knowledge of Fukushima who asked not to be identified because of his commercial ties in Japan.
Tokyo Electric began venting the No. 1 reactor on March 12 just after 10 a.m. An hour earlier the pressure in the reactor was twice its designed limit. Six hours later the reactor exploded.
The same pattern held with reactor No. 3. Venting to relieve a dangerous build-up of pressure in the reactor began on March 13. A day later, the outer building - a concrete and steel shell known as the "secondary containment" -- exploded.
Toshiaki Sakai, the Tokyo Electric researcher who worked on tsunami risk, also sat on a panel in 2008 that reviewed the damage to the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear plant. In that case, Tokyo Electric safely shut down the plant, which survived a quake 2.5 times stronger than it had been designed to handle.
Sakai and the other panelists agreed that despite the successful outcome the way the ground sank and broke underground pipes needed for firefighting equipment had to be considered "a failure to fulfill expected performance".
Japanese regulators also knew a major earthquake could damage exhaust ducts. A September 2007 review of damage at the same Tokyo Electric nuclear plant by NISA Deputy Director Akira Fukushima showed two spots where the exhaust ducts had broken.
No new standard was put in place requiring vents to be shored up against potential damage, records show.
Masashi Goto, a former nuclear engineer who has turned critical of the industry, said he believed Tokyo Electric and regulators wrongly focused on the parts of the plant that performed well in the 2007 quake, rather than the weaknesses it exposed. "I think they drew the wrong lesson," Goto said.
The March 11 quake not only damaged the vents but also the gauges in the Fukushima Daiichi complex, which meant that Tokyo Electric was without much of the instrumentation it needed to assess the situation on the ground during the crisis.
"The data we're getting is very sketchy and makes it impossible for us to do the analysis," said David Lochbaum, a nuclear expert and analyst with the Union of Concerned Scientists. "It's hard to connect the dots when there are so few dots."
In fact, Japan's NSC had concluded in 1992 that it was important for nuclear plant operators to have access to key gauges and instruments even in the kind of crisis that had not happened then. But it left plans on how to implement that policy entirely to the plant operators.
In the Fukushima accident, most meters and gauges were taken out by the loss of power in the early days of the crisis.
That left a pair of workers in a white Prius to race into the plant to get radiation readings with a handheld device in the early days of the crisis, according to Tokyo Electric.
They could have used robots to go in.
Immediately after the tsunami, a French firm with nuclear expertise shipped robots for use in Fukushima, a European nuclear expert said. The robots are built to withstand high radiation.
But Japan, arguably the country with the most advanced robotics industry, stopped them from arriving in Fukishima, saying such help could only come through government channels, said the expert who asked not to be identified so as not to appear critical of Japan in a moment of crisis.
(Scott DiSavino was reporting from New York; Additional reporting by Kentaro Sugiayama in Tokyo, Bernie Woodall in Detroit, Eileen O'Grady in New York, Roberta Rampton in Washington; Editing by Bill Tarrant)
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"The idea of upgrading a plant was taboo," 至るところにタブーが存在する日本。こんなところに福島原発事故は起こるべきして起こった。
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福島原発はまだ予断を許さない状況
Fukushima Nuke Plant Still Vulnerable
By AP / MARI YAMAGUCHI Tuesday, Feb. 28, 2012
(OKUMA, Japan) — Japan's tsunami-hit Fukushima power plant remains fragile nearly a year after it suffered multiple meltdowns, its chief said Tuesday, with makeshift equipment — some mended with tape — keeping crucial systems running.
An independent report, meanwhile, revealed that the government downplayed the full danger in the days after the March 11 disaster and secretly considered evacuating Tokyo.
Journalists given a tour of the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant on Tuesday, including a reporter from The Associated Press, saw crumpled trucks and equipment still lying on the ground. A power pylon that collapsed in the tsunami, cutting electricity to the plant's vital cooling system and setting off the crisis, remained a mangled mess.
Officials said the worst is over but the plant remains vulnerable.
"I have to admit that it's still rather fragile," said plant chief Takeshi Takahashi, who took the job in December after his predecessor resigned due to health reasons. "Even though the plant has achieved what we call 'cold shutdown conditions,' it still causes problems that must be improved."
The government announced in December that three melted reactors at the plant had basically stabilized and that radiation releases had dropped. It still will take decades to fully decommission the plant, and it must be kept stable until then.
The operators have installed multiple backup power supplies, a cooling system and equipment to process massive amounts of contaminated water that leaked from the damaged reactors.
But the equipment that serves as the lifeline of the cooling system is shockingly feeble-looking. Plastic hoses cracked by freezing temperatures have been mended with tape. A set of three pumps sits on the back of a pickup truck.
Along with the pumps, the plant now has 1,000 tanks to store more than 160,000 tons of contaminated water.
Radiation levels in the Unit 1 reactor have fallen, allowing workers to repair some damage to the reactor building. But the Unit 3 reactor, whose roof was blown off by a hydrogen explosion, resembles an ashtray filled with a heap of cigarette butts.
A dosimeter recorded the highest radiation reading outside Unit 3 during Tuesday's tour — 1.5 millisieverts per hour. That is a major improvement from last year, when up to 10 sieverts per hour were registered near Units 1 and 2.
Exposure to more than 1,000 millisieverts, or 1 sievert, can cause radiation sickness including nausea and an elevated risk of cancer.
Officials say radiation hot spots remain inside the plant and minimizing exposure to them is a challenge. Employees usually work for two to three hours at a time, but in some areas, including highly contaminated Unit 3, they can stay only a few minutes.
Since the March 11 crisis, no one has died from radiation exposure.
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Tuesday's tour, organized by plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co., or TEPCO, came as an independent group released a report saying the government withheld information about the full danger of the disaster from its own people and from the United States.
The report by the private Rebuild Japan Initiative Foundation delivers a scathing view of how leaders played down the risks of the reactor meltdowns while holding secret discussions of a worst-case scenario in which massive radiation releases would require the evacuation of a much wider region, including Tokyo. The discussions were reported last month by the AP.
The report, compiled from interviews with more than 300 people, paints a picture of confusion during the days immediately after the accident. It says U.S.-Japan relations were put at risk because of U.S. frustration and skepticism over the scattered information provided by Japan.
The misunderstandings were gradually cleared up after a bilateral committee was set up on March 22 and began regular meetings, according to the report.
It credits then-Prime Minister Naoto Kan for ordering TEPCO not to withdraw its staff from the plant and to keep fighting to bring it under control.
TEPCO's president at the time, Masataka Shimizu, called Kan on March 15 and said he wanted to abandon the plant and have all 600 TEPCO staff flee, the report said. That would have allowed the situation to spiral out of control, resulting in a much larger release of radiation.
A group of about 50 workers was eventually able to bring the plant under control.
TEPCO, which declined to take part in the investigation, has denied it planned to abandon Fukushima Dai-ichi. The report notes the denial, but says Kan and other officials had the clear understanding that TEPCO had asked to leave.
But the report criticizes Kan for attempting to micromanage the disaster and for not releasing critical information on radiation leaks, thereby creating widespread distrust of the government.
Kan said he was grateful the report gave a favorable assessment of his decision to prevent TEPCO workers from abandoning the plant.
"I give my heartfelt respects to the efforts of the commission," he said in a statement. "I want to do my utmost to prevent a recurrence."
Kan has acknowledged in a recent interview with AP that the release of information was sometimes slow and at times wrong. He blamed a lack of reliable data at the time and denied the government hid such information from the public.
The report also concludes that government oversight of nuclear plant safety had been inadequate, ignoring the risk of tsunami and the need for plant design renovations, and instead clinging to a "myth of safety."
"The idea of upgrading a plant was taboo," said Koichi Kitazawa, a scholar who heads the commission that prepared the report. "We were just lucky that Japan was able to avoid the worst-case scenario. But there is no guarantee this kind of luck will prevail next time."
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今なお終りが見えない福島原発事故が人災であることは、すでに語られて時が経つ。チェック・アンド・バランスを骨子とした現行の日本国憲法の精神が浸透し、もっと尊重されていれば、民官（学）の癒着に反対する精神的拠り所になり、それを担った個人の育成・成長と民主主義の確かな足場を作り、日本社会が国民の幸せの向上と富の享受のために、後退ではなくて前進するとは言えないだろうか。
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Japan leaders, utility slammed for 'man-made' nuclear disaster
July 5, 2012 | 11:45 am
An independent parliamentary commission accused the Japanese government and the nation's leading utility of "collusion" in avoiding vital nuclear safety improvements that would have prevented the reactor meltdowns last year at the tsunami-damaged Fukushima complex.
In its report based on 900 hours of testimony, the Japanese Diet's 10-member investigative panel accused government and industry leaders of having “betrayed the nation's right to be safe from nuclear accidents.”
The report, seven months in the making and at odds with government and industry accounts of culpability, coincided with the first nuclear power plant going back on line since all 50 of Japan's working reactors were shut down for inspection and safety upgrades. The first electrical energy from the No. 3 reactor at Ohi, in central Fukui prefecture, flowed into the national power grid Thursday, the Kansai Electric Power Co. reported Thursday.
Politicians called it "outrageous" that the government decided to restart two reactors at Ohi before the commission's report was issued and without completing all recommended safety improvements, including building a seawall around the reactor complex to protect it from the kind of tsunami that devastated the Fukushima plant.
The earthquake-triggered inundation of March 11, 2011, that led to meltdowns at three of Fukushima's four reactors "cannot be regarded as a natural disaster," Tokyo University professor Kiyoshi Kurokawa wrote in the commission's 600-page report. "It is an obviously man-made disaster ... that could and should have been foreseen and prevented."
Japanese nuclear regulators with the Nuclear Industrial and Safety Agency colluded with Fukushima operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. in willfully ignoring necessary safety upgrades, the report stated.
“Across the board, the commission found ignorance and arrogance unforgivable for anyone or any organization that deals with nuclear power,” the report said.
The commission recommended that the Diet establish a permanent oversight panel to ensure that the government and utilities carry out the necessary measures to prevent any recurrence of the Fukushima disaster, the world's worst nuclear crisis since the 1986 Chernobyl accident in Ukraine.
The Diet commission report was likely to fuel already strong anti-nuclear sentiments in Japan, where 20,000 besieged the offices of Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda last week to protest the planned resumption of nuclear power generation. All 50 operable nuclear reactors in the country had been shut down in a phased inspection program after the Fukushima disaster that saw the final plant go off-line in May, leaving Japan without nuclear energy-generating capacity for the first time in 42 years.
Recent opinion polls in Japan have shown at least 70% of the population want nuclear energy reduced or eliminated. Japan relied on nuclear power for about a third of its energy needs before last year's disasters.
In announcing the first flow of nuclear energy on Thursday, Kansai Electric said it expected the power from the two Ohi plants to avert as much as a 15% power shortfall in the populous Osaka and Kyodo areas this summer.
福島原発事故はまだ収拾していない。それどころか今だ大きな危険を孕んでいる。見守っている世界の原子力エキスパートたちと日本政府・東京電力の対処対策との隔たりと、その苛立ちがわかる記事。
*****
Global help urged to avert reactor 4 pool fire
U.S. expert appalled by Tepco's attitude over 'sleeping dragon' risk
By ERIC JOHNSTON Japan Times Staff writer
Saturday, Sep. 8, 2012
KYOTO — The risk of a fire starting in reactor 4's spent-fuel pool at the Fukushima No. 1 plant continues to alarm scientists and government officials around the world, prompting a leading U.S. nuclear expert to urge Japan to tap global expertise to avert a catastrophe.
Go global: U.S. nuclear expert and opponent Arnie Gundersen addresses an audience Monday in Kyoto, after traveling to Japan to meet with Diet members and citizens' groups over conditions at the Fukushima No. 1 power plant. MICAH GAMPEL
Arnie Gundersen, a nuclear engineer and former executive in the nuclear power industry who is now one of its foremost critics in the United States, has been monitoring the No. 1 plant since the March 2011 triple meltdowns through his Vermont-based Fairewinds Energy Education nonprofit organization.
During a trip to Japan in late August and early September, Gundersen met with Diet members, lawyers and citizens' groups to discuss conditions at the wrecked power station and told an audience in Kyoto on Monday that fears over the spent-fuel pool in reactor 4 remain high.
"The spent-nuclear-fuel pool at Fukushima No. 1's unit 4 remains a sleeping dragon. The situation and possibility of a fuel pool fire in reactor 4 in the days (immediately) after the (March 2011) quake was the reason the U.S. government recommended that the evacuation zone be (set at) 80 km," said Gundersen, who served as an expert witness during the federal investigation into the 1979 Three Mile Island disaster in Pennsylvania.
This evacuation recommendation was based on studies the U.S. conducted more than a decade earlier at New York's Brookhaven National Laboratory, which is owned by the U.S. Department of Energy and researches atomic energy.
"In 1997, the laboratory did a study showing that if a nuclear-fuel pool were to boil dry, it would release enough radiation to cause the permanent evacuation of those living within an 80 km radius (of the complex).
"The Fukushima plant's reactor 4 (pool) has 1,500 fuel bundles. That's more cesium than was released into the atmosphere from all of the nuclear bombs ever exploded, (which total) more than 700 over a period of 30 years. That's also why the U.S. recommended an evacuation with an 80 km radius," Gundersen explained.
But even today, concerns persist among experts worldwide that reactor 4's pool is still at risk of boiling dry. If this were to occur, it would necessitate a massive and immediate evacuation of the surrounding area.
Nuclear fuel rods are extremely thin and clad with zircaloy, a zirconium alloy that contains a tiny amount of tin and other metals. But zircaloy burns if it is exposed to air, as shown in a test conducted at the Sandia National Laboratory in New Mexico just two weeks before the Great East Japan Earthquake devastated the Tohoku region.
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The facility is wholly owned by Sandia Corp., a subsidiary of Lockheed Martin Corp., and undertakes research for the Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration.
"Last week, I showed slides of the Sandia lab experiments to some Diet members. Afterward, Tokyo Electric Power Co. officials presented their plan to empty the nuclear fuel from the reactor pool," Gundersen said.
"I told Tepco that while I realized they hoped and believed that there will always be water in the nuclear fuel pool, I had to ask whether or not they had (already prepared and stationed) any chemicals to put out a nuclear fuel pool fire in the event they were wrong.
"Tepco's response was that there was nothing in the fuel pool that could burn, a statement I find appalling."
In July, Tepco announced it had removed two unused nuclear fuel assemblies from reactor 4's pool, the first of more than 1,500 that will have to be retrieved. If everything goes according to plan, the utility will begin extracting the remaining assemblies, used to store spent fuel rods, from December 2013 and complete the task within three years.
But the state of the fuel pool and the lack of preparations to deal with a possible fire has drawn intense criticism not just from experts like Gundersen but also from some senior officials in the U.S.
Sen. Ron Wyden, a member of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources who visited Fukushima Prefecture in April, sent a letter to Japan's ambassador in Washington upon his return urging Tokyo to tap the expertise and knowhow of the United States and other countries to complete the cleanup work more quickly.
"Tepco's Dec. 21 remediation road map proposes to take up to 10 years to complete spent-fuel removal from all of the pools on the (Fukushima No. 1) site," Wyden wrote.
"Given the compromised nature of these structures due to the events of March 11, this schedule carries extraordinary and continuing risk if further severe seismic events were to occur.
"Many nations possess expertise in nuclear energy technology and its full breadth should be made available to Japan in dealing with" the Fukushima disaster, the letter said.
Later that month, 72 domestic antinuclear groups, along with former Ambassador to Switzerland Mitsuhei Murata and ex-U.N. diplomat Akio Matsumura, called on the United Nations to establish a nuclear security summit to specifically focus on the spent-fuel pool at reactor 4 and to also establish an independent assessment team to investigate the matter.
However, Gundersen said he is still awaiting signs from the Japanese government or Tepco officials indicating they're ready to canvass a broad range of experts around the world over how best to deal with not only the unit 4 situation, but the larger question of what to do with the Fukushima No. 1 plant.
"Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency and Tepco claim they are getting outside expertise from the International Atomic Energy Agency, but Article II of the IAEA's charter states its mission is to promote nuclear power. There is a real need for experts who think outside the box," Gundersen said.
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福島原発事故は人災。原子力規制委員会の委員たちと東電との金をめぐる癒着により、厳しいはずの安全規制が弛められた結果発生。予防できたはずの災害であった。
****
Japan nuclear safety team took utility money
Nov 3, 5:50 AM EDT
By YURI KAGEYAMA AP Business Writer
TOKYO (AP) -- Members of a Japanese government team assigned to set reactor safety measures received funding from utility companies or atomic industry manufacturers, raising questions about the experts' neutrality in the wake of last year's tsunami-triggered nuclear disaster.
The Nuclear Regulation Authority said Friday that Nagoya University Professor Akio Yamamoto received 27.14 million yen ($339,000) over the past three years for research on reactors. That includes 6.28 million yen ($79,000) from a subsidiary of Tokyo Electric Power Co., the utility that runs the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant sent into meltdowns last year.
The authority said Friday that three others on the six-member standards team received industry funding. Getting such money is not illegal, but it could call the neutrality of the team into question, since the industry would benefit from laxer standards.
The commission had asked the team members to voluntarily disclose such funding, including grants and donations, in an effort to boost transparency.
Akira Yamaguchi, a professor at Osaka University, got 10 million yen ($125,000) in such money, including 3 million yen from Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, which makes nuclear plants.
Before, regulators were in the same ministry that promotes the industry. The Nuclear Regulation Authority was set up this year after calls for a more independent watchdog, and large and frequent public protests against nuclear power.
The Tokyo Shimbun newspaper reported Friday that such funding highlights the "danger the measures may turn spineless to reflect the utilities' wishes."
Even the Nuclear Regulation Authority's chief, Shunichi Tanaka, has been under fire as possibly being too pro-nuclear. He was a key member of a government panel promoting nuclear energy and headed government research on the technology before being tapped for the job.
Separately, another team of experts working under the commission has been examining earthquake faults at Ohi nuclear power plant, which houses the only two reactors running in Japan.
A decision is expected Sunday on whether Ohi will be shut down.
Japan's 50 nuclear reactors, besides the four ruined at Fukushima Dai-ichi, have not been turned back on after getting turned off for routine inspections.
The two at Ohi went back on in July, barely two months after this nation went without nuclear power. Before the Fukushima disaster, nuclear power had furnished about 30 percent of Japan's electricity.
Ruling party legislator Goshi Hosono, the former minister overseeing the disaster, said Saturday more tests may be needed to check on the faults, but even "a gray zone" of uncertainty would likely mean Ohi reactors would go offline.
Cancer risk from Fukushima disaster small, report says
People living near the site of Japan's 2011 nuclear disaster face only a slightly greater risk of cancer in their lifetimes as a result, a World Health Organization report concludes.
By Monte Morin, Los Angeles Times
March 1, 2013
Three-year-old Wakana Nemoto is screened for radiation exposure in Fukushima, Japan, in April 2011, a month after the nuclear plant disaster. Infants who lived in the vicinity at the time face the greatest additional cancer risk during their lifetimes, a World Health Organization report said. (Hiro Komae / Associated Press / April 16, 2011)
The 9.0-magnitude Tohoku-Oki earthquake and resulting tsunami that triggered a meltdown at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station has resulted in only a small increase in lifetime cancer risks for people living nearby, and an even smaller risk for populations outside of Japan, according to a new report from the World Health Organization.
The uptick in disease resulting from radiation released by the crippled plant is "likely to remain below detectable levels," the study authors concluded in their 166-page report released Thursday. That added risk will probably be drowned out by the choices people make throughout their lives, such as whether to smoke and how much to exercise, they said.
Based on the estimated levels of radiation released into the environment during the Fukushima crisis two years ago, scientists determined that the greatest threat people would probably face would be an increased risk of cancer. The most vulnerable people were infants who lived in close proximity to the plant on Japan's eastern coast.
For instance, baby boys who lived in the area at the time now have a 7% increased risk of developing leukemia during their lifetimes compared with what they would have faced if the meltdown hadn't happened. Baby girls who lived near the plant and were exposed to radiation now have a 6% increased risk of developing breast cancer and a 4% increased risk of developing any type of cancer that forms solid tumors.
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The study authors also calculated that these girls are now 70% more likely to develop thyroid cancer, but they emphasized that the absolute risk was still very small, rising from 0.75% to 1.25%.
Although emergency workers had some of the highest levels of radiation exposure, they had yet to demonstrate acute radiation effects, the scientists found. The only effects that are expected in this group are "possible thyroid disorders in those few workers who inhaled significant quantities of radioactive iodine," the authors wrote.
Six Fukushima plant workers died during or soon after the March 2011 disaster. A United Nations report last year determined that none of them perished due to the effects of radiation and attributed their deaths and injuries to physical trauma, cardiovascular stress and heat stress. One reported leukemia death could not be attributed to the meltdown because of the short time between radiation exposure and death, the U.N. said.
The report said exposure levels were insufficient to cause an increase in miscarriages, stillbirths or birth defects. The report did not assess potential psychosocial or mental health impacts from the disaster.
No discernible increase in health risks was expected outside of Japan, the scientists concluded.
Much of the data that were used to develop the risk forecast model were taken from survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bomb blasts and from the Chernobyl nuclear plant disaster.
The study authors said they took pains not to underestimate potential health risks from the Fukushima disaster. As such, they assumed that people living nearby the power plant took longer to evacuate than they actually did, and that they ate only food produced in the area.
Edwin Lyman, a nuclear physicist with the Union of Concerned Scientists, a watchdog group, said the WHO report's focus on the increased risk to each person "tends to dilute the impact" of the disaster.
Lyman pointed to another study done last year by Stanford University scientists who estimated that the meltdown would cause about 310 cases of cancer, including about 130 deaths. That study was published in the journal Energy & Environmental Science.
Times staff writer Emily Alpert contributed to this report.
Robots have failed Fukushima Daiichi and Japan
March 20, 2013: 8:29 AM ET
By Michael Fitzpatrick, contributor
One of the most highly innovative countries in the world did not have the technology it should have had.
FORTUNE -- Two years since a shudder in the Earth's crust devastated Japan, the country's scientists and engineers are still attempting to develop technologies to make Fukushima safe from radiation. But progress has been slow and—because of institutional failings—more advanced technologies have not been available to workers at the sire.
A country known as a technological superpower ultimately had to rely on low-tech methods during the disaster, including dumping water from the air to cool the raging reactors. High radiation levels prevented engineers from approaching critically damaged areas at the plant two years ago—and still does so today. Robots that some expected to be on call were conspicuously absent. The country faces a bill of between $1 billion and $2.5 billion dollars to dismantle the Fukushima plant, and 40 years until it is safely decommissioned.
Only now are robots being developed that might be able to access the most contaminated areas within the shattered reactors' cores. So how did Japan, with the worlds' most "advanced" robots (not to mention the biggest population of them), fail to deploy the machines that might have spared dangerous human toil?
"For a start," says Dr. Masashi Goto who worked on designing containment vessels of Mark-1 reactors like those at Fukushima Daiichi, "neither Japan's nuclear power industry nor the government concede that an accident like this could ever happen. They have long held that all of Japan reactors are 'absolutely safe.'" In other words, why prepare emergency backups or robots for the event of a quake-induced meltdown when the authorities denied such a thing could ever happen? Doing so would acknowledge a danger perpetually denied.
"They said that �accidents owing to earthquakes would be minimal," adds Goto. "As a consequence the companies involved in designed these reactors were told only to make '�voluntary� efforts to make the reactors' containment vessel quake proof."
Although TEPCO the firm that built and ran the reactors, and the authorities knew disaster response technology on hand was old, little was done to provide backups, such as robots, in the event of a meltdown. Cheap nuclear power was—and still is—too important to Japan's economic competitiveness.
Luckily, so far radiation released from Fukushima is only one tenth of Chernobyl's. The Ukrainian plant blew its top, literally, and spewed, chimney like, nuclear fallout far and wide. Daiichi shutdown, Chernobyl did not. Enough safety protocols functioned to avert an even larger disaster, but the reactors remain unstable. Still, the fact is that no machine exists that can safely obtain proper readings from near the radioactive cores. "It will be difficult to explain where the fuel is. We can't get close enough for proper measurements," admits Yoshinori Moriyama, of Japan's nuclear watchdog NISA.
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At the centre of all this are the Daiichi workers—those unlucky enough to have the task, limited to a few moments at a time, of labouring inside the debris-strewn reactor buildings. With radiation high enough to sabotage electronics, American robots donated to the Daiichi plant have been missing in action, along with a Japanese robot dubbed Quince. Human labor for some of the most dangerous tasks has had to substitute.
"Untrained casual laborers used dustpans to scoop up highly radioactive water into buckets; dashing in and out of doors to reduce their exposure times," says local Fukushima councillor Hiroyuki Watanabe who is studying Daiichi workers and acts as an unofficial spokesman for them. Says one anonymous worker "for all of Japan's high-tech prowess, none of those lauded humanoid helpers were any good at all," referring to Japan's robot programs.
TEPCO and the Japanese government are scrambling now to get some stronger mechanical help into the stricken reactors, calling on the expertise of disaster robot specialists at Technology's Future Robotics Technology Center (fuRo) at the University of Chiba.
But it seems too little, too late. For years much of Japan's robot research and development—billions of dollars worth—was aimed at developing humanoid helpers for the home derided by some as toys, not practical robots like those from fuRO. With authorities prioritising factory and helper humanoids to do the work immigrants do elsewhere in the world, more useful robotics were marginalised.
"The Japanese like to put a face on things, to make them look like a humans or animals. It's more done for entertainment value than real practicality," says Joseph Engelberger the "father of the robotics industry" on Japan's robots. "They should be able to do more."
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The $6.8 Billion Great Wall of Japan: Fukushima Cleanup Takes on Epic Proportion
NIck Cunningham / Oilprice.com @oilandenergy 5:18 PM ET Time
写真=Tanks of radiation-contaminated water are seen at Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO)'s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Fukushima, Japan on March 11, 2015.
'The Great Wall of Japan' may be able to prevent future disasters, but the cleanup could take another forty years before it's complete
More than four years after the catastrophic tsunami that crippled several nuclear reactors in Fukushima, the Japanese utility that owns the site is struggling to deal with a continuous flood of radioactive water.
The tsunami knocked off power at the nuclear plant, which led to the meltdown of three of the six reactors, with a fourth severely damaged. The ongoing release of radioactive material has prevented anyone from entering parts of the complex.
But getting a handle on the mess, let alone permanently cleaning up the site, has been extraordinarily difficult. The problem is the daily flood of rainwater that flows downhill towards the sea, rushing into the mangled radioactive site. An estimated 300 tons of water reaches the building each day, and then becomes contaminated. TEPCO, the utility that owns the site, has been furiously building above ground storage tanks for radioactive water. Storing the water prevents it from being discharged into the sea, but this Sisyphean task does nothing to ultimately solve the problem as the torrent of water never ends. TEPCO has already put more than 500,000 tons of radioactive water in storage tanks.
To reduce the 300 tons of newly created radioactive water each day, TEPCO must cut off the flow of groundwater into the nuclear complex. To do that, it plans on building an ice wall that will surround the four reactors. TEPCO plans on building an intricate array of coolant pipes underneath the reactors, freezing the soil into a hardened ice wall that will block the flow of water. The ice wall will stretch one and a half kilometers around the reactors.
Great plan, except that it has never been done before. TEPCO may be able to freeze the soil, but there is no telling if it can build an ice wall without any holes that could allow water to seep into the reactor building. Questions surrounding the viability of the ice wall, and with it the prospects for halting the flow of radioactive water, heightened after TEPCO announced in mid-March that it was postponing the project.
In fact, much of what TEPCO has to do to clean up the disaster area is daunting. TEPCO actually has to dig up radioactive soil and remove it, putting it in an interim storage facility. The idea is to make Fukushima inhabitable again, rather than indefinitely leave it as a radioactive and toxic no-go zone like the immediate surroundings of Chernobyl. When or if that can happen is anybody’s guess. The removal of radioactive soil began recently.
Another unnerving challenge is TEPCO’s plan to remove radioactive elements from contaminated water and then discharge the water into the Pacific Ocean, a plan that is facing enormous pushback. That’s because TEPCO has lost the trust of the public. Not only has the utility responded poorly to the cleanup, but it also recently admitted to not having publicly disclosed that a leak was resulting in radioactive water flowing into the ocean. TEPCO knew about the leak for more than ten months, one of a long line of acts of obfuscation that has enraged the Japanese public. The Japanese Nuclear Regulatory Authority gave its stamp of approval for dumping cleansed water into the ocean, but the fishing industry is hoping to block the plan, as many fishermen do not trust that the water TEPCO plans on dumping is in fact clean of radioactivity.
The Japanese government hopes to prevent future nuclear meltdowns by constructing “The Great Wall of Japan,” a controversial $6.8 billion campaign to build around 440 sea walls along the coast to fend off tsunamis.
That may be able to prevent future disasters, but in the meantime the cleanup and decommissioning of the Fukushima nuclear power plant continues. It could take another forty years before the work is complete.
This article originally appeared on Oilprice.com.
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