Tag Archives: Fukushima disaster

Essence of Fear: Fukushima Radioactive Water Dump in Pacific Ocean

Nearly three-fourths of South Koreans say they will eat less seafood after Japan starts releasing Fukushima radioactive wastewater into the Pacific Ocean. The price of sea salt in the country skyrocketed and government reserves were released, as panic buying ahead of the nuclear-water dump emptied out the shelves…Japan’s plan to release the water into the sea after diluting the radioactive elements to what it says are safe levels has been affirmed by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), a United Nations body. The agency’s chief, Rafael Grossi, personally delivered the final IAEA report to Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida this week. The report said radionuclides would be released at a lower level than those produced by natural processes and would have a negligible impact on the environment.

But….“The field of nuclear power is contaminated with fear,” said Michael Edwards, a clinical psychiatrist in Sydney who interviewed Fukushima residents following the nuclear accident. “Psychologically, people do not really understand and trust science, and know science can be an instrument of government.”…Beijing’s Foreign Ministry has slammed the Fukushima wastewater plan, accusing Japan of treating the surrounding ocean as the country’s own “private sewer.” China has expanded restrictions on food imports from Japan, which include a ban on food products from Fukushima and nine other prefectures.

Excerpts from Dasl Yoon and Miho Inada ‘How Could I Feel Safe?’ Japan’s Dumping of Radioactive Fukushima Water Stirs Fear, Anger, WSJ, July 7, 2023

The Best Opportunity for Nuclear Industry

[After the war on climate change….]Russia’s war in Ukraine has created the “best opportunity” for Japan’s nuclear industry to stage a comeback since the 2011 Fukushima disaster, according to the country’s largest reactor maker. Akihiko Kato, nuclear division head at Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, said in an interview with the Financial Times…” Japan’s heavy reliance on Russian gas imports has rekindled a debate over nuclear power in the country more than a decade after regulators took most plants offline following one of the worst nuclear disasters in history. The world’s third-largest economy has been plunged into a power crisis exacerbated by the soaring cost of liquefied natural gas and oil. Japan imports about 9 per cent of its LNG from Russia, putting it in a difficult diplomatic position as its western allies impose sanctions on Moscow.

But in contrast with the US, which sources close to a quarter of its processed uranium from Russia, Japan imports about 55 per cent of its processed uranium from western European countries, according to Ryan Kronk, a power markets analyst at Rystad Energy. Kato’s remarks underscored a shift in the country’s nuclear narrative, with an industry that had been in retreat now emboldened to speak out. His remarks come after Prime Minister Fumio Kishida told investors this month in London that Japan would use nuclear power to “help the world achieve de-Russification of energy”. “

Mitsubishi Heavy expects an increase in orders for components from Europe in the coming years, as countries including the UK and France commit to building new nuclear plants.

Excerpts from Ukraine war is ‘best opportunity’ for nuclear comeback since Fukushima, industry says, FT, May 15, 2022

No Matter What they Say-Nobody Likes Nuclear Waste

The first stage of the process has been under way since November 2020 for the town of Suttsu and the village of Kamoenai assessing two municipalities in Hokkaido for their suitability to host a final disposal facility for high-level radioactive waste from nuclear power plants. Under the government’s plan, the first-stage surveys take two years and will be followed by the second phase… which will include geophysical exploration, geological reconnaissance surveys and drilling surveys. Already stories about divisions and conflict over the surveys are emerging from the local communities.

The mayoral election of Suttsu in October 2021, for example, turned into a bitter and divisive political battle over the issue between the incumbent who decided to apply for the first-phase survey and a challenger who ran on opposition to the project. Some of the neighboring municipalities have enacted an ordinance to ban the entry of radioactive materials. Both the Hokkaido prefectural government and most of the local administrations around the two municipalities have declined to accept state subsidies related to the surveys. These actions have been driven by the fear that accepting the surveys will set in motion an unstoppable process leading to a permanent repository for nuclear waste.

The NUMO (Nuclear Waste Management Organization of Japan) and the METI (Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry) have jointly held more than 100 meetings to explain the plan to local communities across the nation. Even though they have continued calling for localities to volunteer, no local governments except for the two in Hokkaido have responded.

Excerpts from Entire nation should share in disposal of spent nuke fuel, Asahi Shimbun, Nov. 22, 2021

Unthinkable: What Happens When Water Floods a Nuclear Plant

As the 9.0 magnitude earthquake hit the Japanese shore, the reactors of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant shut down automatically to control the nuclear fission. The electrical lines collapsed, but the plant responded as designed, and the earthquake itself did not cause any other problems. The tsunami it triggered, however, did.

“The reactors were robust, seismically speaking,” said Gustavo Caruso, Director of the IAEA’s Office of Safety and Security Coordination. “But they were vulnerable to the high tsunami waves.” When the flooding hit, the ‘tsunami walls’ made to protect the plant from such events were too low to prevent the sea water from entering the plant. The water’s strength destroyed some of the structures, and entered the diesel generator room — which was built lower and at a closer distance to sea level than other plants in Japan — affecting Units 1, 2 and 3. “The diesel generators are essential for maintaining the plant’s electrical supplies in emergency situations,” said Pal Vincze, Head of the Nuclear Power Engineering Section at the IAEA. “They were drowned.”

If the diesel generator is affected, special batteries can be used to generate electricity, but these have a limited capacity, and, in the case of Fukushima Daiichi, some were also flooded. “In Japan, they put up a heroic fight to get the electrical systems up and running again, but it wasn’t enough,” Vincze added.

Without functioning instrumentation and control systems, or electrical power or cooling capabilities, the overheated fuel melted, sank to the bottom of the reactors, and breached the reactor vessels, leading to three meltdowns. In addition, data logs and vital systems operated by safety parameters were also flooded, which meant that there was no way for the operator to monitor what was going on inside the reactors.

As stated in the IAEA report on the Fukushima Daiichi accident, “a major factor that contributed to the accident was the widespread assumption in Japan that its nuclear power plants were so safe that an accident of this magnitude was simply unthinkable. But…When planning, designing and constructing the plant, experts did not properly take into consideration past tsunami experiences… “It must be noted that the combination of an earthquake of this magnitude and a tsunami is extremely rare, but unfortunately this is what happened.”…

Excerpt from Laura Gil Fukushima Daiichi: The Accident, IAEA Bulletin, Mar. 2021

The Fukushima Nuclear Meltdown: Ten Years — and Counting

A resolution to the crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant remains a distant goal a decade after three of its reactors melted down. The most challenging part of the cleanup—removing molten nuclear fuel from each reactor—has yet to begin because of high radiation inside the reactor buildings, putting the targeted decommissioning of the plant by 2051 into doubt.

More than 80% of the Japanese public doesn’t feel significant progress is being made and is concerned about further accidents because of recent events. On Feb. 13, 2021 a large earthquake centered near Fukushima, an aftershock of the one 10 years ago, caused water to slosh out of a tank containing spent fuel rods, which must be kept submerged to avoid overheating. A week later, a fish caught off the coast of Fukushima was found to contain 10 times the allowed level of radioactive cesium…This incident shows how risks from the plant continue to weigh on those who live and work nearby.

“We are still struggling with harmful rumors from the nuclear plant accident,” said Tadaaki Sawada, a spokesman for the federation of Fukushima fishery cooperatives. “How many more years will it continue?”…By several measures, the worst nuclear disaster since the Chernobyl accident in 1986 has been contained. Only around 2% of Fukushima prefecture, or state, is still a no-go area, down from 12% immediately after the disaster. An extensive decontamination process removed topsoil from areas around the plant. Still, thousands of people remain forced out of towns closest to the plant.

In 2020, plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co., known as Tepco, and the government were close to a decision to start releasing into the sea over a million cubic meters of water from the plant, but plans were suspended amid opposition from local fishermen and concerns raised by neighboring countries. Contaminated rain and groundwater is stored in large tanks that dominate one side of the plant site. Once treated to remove most radioactive elements, the water still contains tritium, a form of hydrogen that emits a weak form of radiation. Tritium is regularly released into the sea and air from nuclear plants around the world after dilution.

Inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency visited the Fukushima plant in 2020 and said disposal of the treated water into the sea would be in line with international practice. “A decision on the disposition path should be taken urgently” to keep the overall decommissioning on track, the IAEA said.

The most challenging part of the cleanup—removing molten nuclear fuel from each reactor—has yet to begin…Tepco has yet to get a clear picture of the location of molten fuel in the reactors because the levels of radiation are damaging even to robots…Gov. Uchibori said that gaining an accurate grasp of the molten-fuel situation was critical to making headway. “If you look at the entire process, right now we are still around the starting point of decommissioning,” he said.

Excerpts from Alastair Gale Fukushima Nuclear Cleanup Is Just Beginning a Decade After Disaster,

Radioactive Water Dumping and Human Rights

In the aftermath of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, [UN Special Rapporteurs have] consistently raised concerns about the approaches taken by the government of Japan. UN Special Rapporteurs have been concerned that raising of “acceptable limits” of radiation exposure to urge resettlement violated the government’s human rights obligations to children.

UN Special Rapporteurs have been concerned of the possible exploitation of migrants and the poor for radioactive decontamination work. Their most recent concern is how the government used the COVID-19 crisis to dramatically accelerate its timeline for deciding whether to dump radioactive wastewater accumulating at Fukushima Daiichi in the ocean

The communities of Fukushima, so devastated by the tragic events of March 11, 2011, have expressed their concerns and opposition to the discharge of the contaminated water into their environment. It is their human right to an environment that allows for living a life in dignity, to enjoy their culture, and to not be exposed deliberately to additional radioactive contamination. Those rights should be fully respected and not be disregarded by the government in Tokyo. The discharge of nuclear waste to the ocean could damage Japan’s international relations. Neighboring countries are already concerned about the release of large volumes of radioactive tritium and other contaminants in the wastewater.

Japan has a duty under international law to prevent transboundary environmental harm. More specifically, under the London Convention, Japan has an obligation to take precaution with the respect to the dumping of waste in the ocean.

Indigenous peoples have an internationally recognized right to free, prior and informed consent. This includes the disposal of waste in their waters and actions that may contaminate their food. No matter how small the Japanese government believes this contamination will be of their water and food, there is an unquestionable obligation to consult with potentially affected indigenous peoples that it has not met…The disaster of 2011 cannot be undone. However, Japan still has an opportunity to minimize the damage…There are grave risks to the livelihoods of fishermen in Japan and also to its international reputation. Again, I urge the Japanese government to think twice about its legacy: as a true champion of human rights and the environment, or not.

Excerpts from, Baskut Tuncak [UN Rapporteur], Fukushima nuclear waste decision also a human rights issue, Kyodo News, July 8, 2020

Praying for Renewable Energy

In the wake of the Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011, Fukushima prefecture itself pledged to get all its power from renewable sources by 2040. The hoped-for transformation, however, has been “slow and almost invisible.”…Renewable generation has grown from 10% of the power supply in 2010 to 17% in 2018, almost half of which comes from old hydropower schemes. Most nuclear plants, which provided more than a quarter of the country’s power before the 2011 disaster, have been shut down… But for the most part they have been replaced not by wind turbines and solar panels but by power stations that burn coal and natural gas. The current government wants nuclear plants to provide at least 20% of electricity by 2030. It also wants coal’s share of generation to grow, and has approved plans to build 22 new coal-fired plants over the next five years. The target for renewables, by contrast, is 22-24%, below the current global average, and far lower than in many European countries.

Geography and geology provide part of the answer. Japan is densely populated and mountainous. That makes solar and onshore wind farms costlier to build than in places with lots of flat, empty land. The sea floor drops away more steeply off Japan’s coasts than it does in places where offshore wind has boomed, such as the North Sea. And although geothermal power holds promise, the most suitable sites tend to be in national parks or near privately owned hot springs.

Government policies also help stifle the growth of renewable energy. Since the end of the second world war, privately owned, vertically integrated regional utilities have dominated the electricity market. These ten behemoths provide stable power within their regions, but do little to co-ordinate supply and demand across their borders…The limited transmission between regions makes it even harder than usual to cope with intermittent generation from wind turbines and solar panels. It also reduces competition, which suits the incumbent utilities just fine…Recent reforms have attempted to promote renewables both directly and indirectly…The “feed-in tariff”, obliging utilities to pay a generous fixed price for certain forms of renewable energy—a policy that has prompted investors to pile into solar and wind in other countries. In 2016, the government fully liberalised the retail electricity market. It has also set up new regulatory bodies to promote transmission between regions and to police energy markets. In April 2020 a law came into force that requires utilities to run their generation, transmission and distribution units as separate businesses. These reforms constitute a policy of “radical incrementalism”.

Critics say the steps have been too incremental and not radical enough. Utilities continue to make it time-consuming and costly for new entrants to get access to the grid, imposing rules that are “not fair for newcomers”, according to Takahashi Hiroshi of Tsuru University. Existing power plants are favoured over new facilities, and the share of renewables is limited, on the ground that their intermittency threatens the grid’s stability.

But even if the government is timid, investors can still make a difference…. Several of Japan’s big multinationals have pledged to switch to clean power on a scale and schedule that put the government’s targets to shame. Environmental activism has made banks and businesses wary of investments in coal. Even big utilities have come to see business opportunities in renewables, especially in the government’s imminent auction of sites for offshore wind plants. Two of them, Tohoku Electric Power and Tokyo Electric Power (TEPCO), have announced plans this year to issue “green bonds” to finance renewables projects. In March 2020, TEPCO established a joint venture with Orsted, a Danish oil firm that has become a pioneer in offshore wind.

Exceprts from Renewable Energy in Japan: No Mill Will, Economist, June 13, 2020

Forever Fukushima: Cleaning Up the Huge Mess

By the end of 2019, Japan further delayed the removal of thousands of spent fuel units that remain in cooling pools since the 2011 disaster The government and the plant operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co., are keeping a 30- to 40-year completion target.

More than 4,700 units of fuel rods remain at the three melted reactors and two others that survived the 2011 earthquake and tsunami. They pose a high risk because their storage pools are uncovered and a loss of water in case of another major disaster could cause the fuel rods to melt, releasing massive radiation. Their removal at Units 1 and 2, after repeated delays, is now postponed by up to 10 years from the initial target of 2018, with more preparation needed to reduce radiation and clear debris and other risks.

Fuel rod removal at the Unit 1 reactor pool will begin sometime in 2027-2028, after debris is cleaned up and a huge rooftop cover installed to contain radioactive dust. Fuel removal at Unit 2 pool is to begin in 2024-2026. Work at the Unit 3 reactor pool began in April 2019 and all 566 units will be removed by March 2021. TEPCO has emptied the pool at Unit 4, which was offline and only suffered building damage, and aims to have all remaining rods in reactor pools removed by 2031 for safer storage in dry casks.

TEPCO has been unable to release the 1.2 million tons of treated but still radioactive water kept in nearly 1,000 tanks at the plant, fearing public repercussions and the impact on the area’s struggling fishing and agriculture. The amount of water is growing by 170 tons daily because it is used to cool the melted fuel inside the reactors.

The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry recently drafted a proposal to release the water to the sea or the air, or a combination of both. TEPCO says it can only store up to 1.37 million tons, or until the summer of 2022. Time is limited because preparation is needed before any water release. TEPCO and the government say the tanks pose risks if they were to spill their contents in another major earthquake, tsunami or flood…. The water is still somewhat contaminated, but TEPCO says further treatment can remove all but radioactive tritium to levels allowed for release. Experts say tritium is not harmful to humans in small amounts and has been routinely released from nuclear plants around the world.

Removing an estimated 880 tons of molten fuel from Fukushima’s three melted reactors is the toughest and unprecedented challenge. It’s six times the amount dealt with in the aftermath of the 1979 Three Mile Island partial core melt in the United States. Removal is to begin in 2021 at Unit 2, where robotic probes have made more progress than at Units 1 and 3. A robotic arm was developed to enter the reactor from the side to reach the melted fuel, which has largely fallen to the bottom of the primary containment vessel… The first decade through 2031 is a crucial phase that will affect future progress…

Japan has yet to develop a plan to dispose of the highly radioactive melted fuel and other debris that come out of the reactors. TEPCO will compile a plan for those after the first decade of melted fuel removal. Managing the waste will require new technologies to reduce its volume and toxicity. TEPCO and the government say they plan to build a site to store waste and debris removed from the reactors, but finding one and obtaining public consent will be difficult.

Additionally, there will be an estimated 770,000 tons of solid radioactive waste by 2030, including contaminated debris and soil, sludge from water treatment, scrapped tanks and other waste. They will be sorted, treated and compacted for safe storage under a plan to be compiled by 2028.

The government says Fukushima’s decommissioning cost is estimated at 8 trillion yen ($73 billion), though adding compensation, decontamination of surrounding areas and medium-term storage facilities would bring the total to an estimated 22 trillion yen ($200 billion). The Japan Center for Economic Research, a think tank, estimates that decommissioning alone would cost 51 trillion yen ($470 billion) if the water is not released and tritium removal technology is pursued.

More than 10,000 workers will be needed annually in coming years, about one third assigned to work related to the radioactive water.

Excerpts from MARI YAMAGUCHI, Japan revises Fukushima cleanup plan, delays key steps, Associated Press, Dec. 27, 2019

A Huge Headache: the Radioactive Water at Fukushima

What to do with the enormous amount of radioactive water, which grows by around 150 tons a day at Fukushima, is a thorny question, with controversy surrounding a long-standing proposal to discharge it into the sea, after extensive decontamination. The water comes from several different sources: Some is used for cooling at the plant, which suffered a meltdown after it was hit by a tsunami triggered by a massive earthquake in March 2011. Groundwater that seeps into the plant daily, along with rainwater, add to the problem.

A thousand, towering tanks have now replaced many of the cherry trees that once dotted the plant’s ground. Each can hold 1,200 tons, and most of them are already full. “We will build more on the site until the end of 2020, and we think all the tanks will be full by around the summer of 2022,” said Junichi Matsumoto, an official with the unit of plant operator TEPCO in charge of dismantling the site.

TEPCO has been struggling with the problem for years, taking various measures to limit the amount of groundwater entering the site. There is also an extensive pumping and filtration system, that each day brings up tons of newly contaminated water and filters out as many of the radioactive elements as possible.

The hangar where the decontamination system runs is designated “Zone Y” — a danger zone requiring special protections. All those entering must wear elaborate protection: a full body suit, three layers of socks, three layers of gloves, a double cap topped by a helmet, a vest with a pocket carrying a dosimeter, a full-face respirator mask and special shoes. Most of the outfit has to burned after use.

“The machinery filters contain radionuclides, so you have to be very protected here, just like with the buildings where the reactors are,” explained TEPCO risk communicator Katsutoshi Oyama. TEPCO has been filtering newly contaminated water for years, but much of it needs to go through the process again because early versions of the filtration process did not fully remove some dangerous radioactive elements, including strontium 90.

The current process is more effective, removing or reducing around 60 radionuclides to levels accepted by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) for water being discharged. But there is one that remains, which cannot be removed with the current technology: tritium.

Tritium is naturally present in the environment, and has also been discharged in its artificial form into the environment by the nuclear industry around the world. There is little evidence that it causes harm to humans except in very high concentrations and the IAEA argues that properly filtered Fukushima water could be diluted with seawater and then safely released into the ocean without causing environmental problems.

But those assurances are of little comfort to many in the region, particularly Fukushima’s fishing industry which, like local farmers, has suffered from the outside perception that food from the region is unsafe.

Karyn Nishimura, At Fukushima plant, a million-ton headache: radioactive water, Japan Times, Oct. 7, 2019

Where to Go? 1 Million Tons Radioactive Water at Fukushima

In August 2019, Tepco projected that storage of radioactive water at the Fukushima nuclear plant would reach full capacity by around summer 2022 even after the expansion — the first time it has issued such a precise estimate. According to Tepco, the Fukushima No. 1 plant had 960 massive tanks containing 1.15 million tons of treated water as of July 18, 2019. Water that has touched the highly radioactive melted fuel debris has been cleaned up through water treatment machines and is stored in the tanks, but the high-tech treatment machines are able to remove most radionuclides except tritium. The plant currently sees an increase of contaminated water by 170 tons a day, Tepco says.

Releasing tritium-tainted water into the sea in a controlled manner is common practice at nuclear power plants around the world, and it was generally considered the most viable option as it could be done quickly and would cost the least. The head of the Nuclear Regulation Authority, Toyoshi Fuketa, has long said that releasing the treated water into the sea is the most reasonable option, but people in Fukushima, especially fishermen, fear it will damage the region’s reputation.

Addressing those concerns, the government panel, launched in November 2016, has been looking for the best option in terms of guarding against reputational damage. Injecting it into the ground, discharging it as steam or hydrogen, or solidification followed by underground burial have all been on the table. Under the current plan, Tepco is set to increase the tank space to store 1.37 million tons of water a total, but estimates show that will only last until summer 2022. But the more space it creates, the bigger the decommissioning headache becomes.

Excerpts from KAZUAKI NAGAT, Fukushima nuclear plant to run out of tanks to store tritium-laced water in three years, Tepco says, Japan Times, Aug. 9, 2019
BY KAZUAKI NAGATA

Never-Ending CleanUp: Fukushima

The operator of Japan’s wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant completed in April 2019 the removal of the first fuel rods from a cooling pool high up in a badly damaged reactor building, a rare success in the often fraught battle to control the site. The batch of 22 unused fuel assemblies, which each contain 50-70 of the fuel rods, was transferred by a trailer to a safer storage pool, the last day of a four-day operation, Tokyo Electric Power Co, or Tepco, said in a statement.

The company must carefully pluck more than 1,500 brittle and potentially damaged assemblies from the unstable reactor No.4., the early stages of a decommissioning process following the 2011 earthquake and tsunami that wrecked the site.

Tepco estimates removing the damaged assemblies from reactor No.4 alone will take a year. Some experts say that timeline is ambitious. Still, it is an urgent operation. They are being stored 18 meters (59 feet) above ground level in a building that has buckled and tilted and could collapse if another quake strikes. Carefully plucking the damaged fuel assemblies from the reactor building is being seen as a test of Tepco’s ability to move ahead with decommissioning the whole facility – a task likely to cost tens of billions of dollars and take decades. The removal has to be conducted under water. If the rods are exposed to air or if they break, huge amounts of radioactive gases could be released into the atmosphere. Each assembly weighs around 300 kg (660 pounds) and is 4.5 meters (15 feet) long. The hazardous removal operation has been likened by Arnie Gundersen, a veteran U.S. nuclear engineer and director of Fairewinds Energy Education, to trying to pull cigarettes from a crushed pack.

Exerpts from In Start of Long Operation, Fukushima Removes First Fuel Rods, Reuters, April 2019

Revival of Nuclear Industry – Japan

Japan prepares to reopen Shikoku Electric Power’s Ikata nuclear plant, nestled next to Japan’s inland sea at the base of the verdant Sadamisaki peninsula. Nearly eight years after an earthquake and tsunami triggered nuclear meltdowns at Tokyo Electric Power’s Fukushima Daiichi plant, the battered industry is making a quiet and somewhat unexpected return in Japan.

Ikata is a poster child for that recovery. In September 2018, a court reversed a decision that had idled Shikoku Electric’s sole nuclear reactor for about a year, paving the way for the operator to re-open the facility last week. Regional utilities like Shikoku Electric have aggressively fought a string of lawsuits since 2011, hiring veteran lawyers to beef up their legal teams. At the same time, they wooed towns where nuclear plants are based, visiting with residents door to door while the government kept up a stream of generous subsidies for local projects.

Thanks in large part to this strategy, Japan is on track to have nine reactors running in the near future…That is a far cry from the 54 running before 2011 – all of which were idled after the Fukushima disaster – but more than analysts and experts expected, considering it seemed at the time like the end of the road for the country’s nuclear industry…

The quiet revival of Japan’s nuclear industry is most tangible in rural areas like Ikata, which are home to the bulk of the country’s nuclear plants…The town, with 9,500 residents, relies on nuclear power for a third of its annual revenue. Since 1974, Ikata has received more than 101.7 billion yen ($908.4 million) in such payments. These funds literally built the town; Ikata’s roads, schools, hospitals, fire stations and even five traditional “taiko” drums for festivals were all paid for with subsidies. The town and utility’s mutual dependence stretch back decades.

Excerpts from Mari Saito, Treading carefully, Japan’s nuclear industry makes a comeback, Reuters, Nov. 1, 2018

What to Do with Radioactive Pools

More than 60,000 tons of highly radioactive spent nuclear fuel is stored on the shores of four of the five Great Lakes at the Border between United States and Canada — in some cases, mere yards from the waterline — in still-growing stockpiles…It remains on the shorelines because there’s still nowhere else to put it…

The nuclear power industry and its federal regulator, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, point to spent nuclear fuel’s safe on-site storage over decades. But the remote possibility of a worst-case scenario release — from a natural disaster, a major accident, or an act of terrorism — could cause unthinkable consequences for the Great Lakes region. Scientific research has shown a radioactive cloud from a spent fuel pool fire would span hundreds of miles, and force the evacuation of millions of residents in Detroit, Chicago, Cleveland, Toronto or other population centers, depending on where the accident occurred and wind patterns.

For five years, Michigan residents, lawmakers, environmental groups and others around the Midwest have, loudly and nearly unanimously, opposed a planned Canadian underground repository for low-to-medium radioactive waste at Kincardine, Ontario, near the shores of Lake Huron. Meanwhile, spent nuclear fuel, vastly more radioactive, sits not far from the shores of four Great Lakes — Michigan, Huron, Erie and Ontario — at 15 currently operating or former nuclear power plant sites on the U.S. side. In Michigan, that includes Fermi 2; the Donald C. Cook nuclear plant in Berrien County; the Palisades nuclear plant in Van Buren County, and the former Big Rock Point nuclear plant in Charlevoix County, which ceased operation in 1997 and where now only casks of spent nuclear fuel remain.

Neither the U.S. nor the Canadian government has constructed a central collection site for the spent nuclear fuel. It’s not just a problem in the Great Lakes region — more than 88,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel, an amount that is rising, is stored at 121 U.S. locations across 39 states.

Spent nuclear fuel isn’t only radioactive, it continues to generate heat. It requires storage in pools with circulating water for typically five years before it can be moved into so-called dry-cask storage — concrete-and-steel obelisks where spent fuel rods receive continued cooling by circulating air.In practice, however, because of the high costs associated with transferring waste from wet pools to dry casks, nuclear plants have kept decades worth of spent fuel in wet storage. Plant officials instead “re-rack” the pools, reconfiguring them to add more and more spent fuel, well beyond the capacities for which the pools were originally designed.

Only in recent years have nuclear plants stepped up the transition to dry cask storage because there’s no room left in the wet pools. Still, about two-thirds of on-site spent nuclear fuel remains in wet pools in the U.S….That’s a safety concern, critics contend. A catastrophe or act of terrorism that drains a spent fuel pool could cause rising temperatures that could eventually cause zirconium cladding — special brackets that hold the spent fuel rods in bundles — to catch fire. Such a disaster could be worse than a meltdown in a nuclear reactor, as spent nuclear fuel is typically stored with nowhere near the fortified containment of a reactor core.

At Fukushima…what almost happened — at the plant’s Unit 4 spent-fuel pool that gives nuclear watchdogs nightmares. A hydrogen explosion four days into the disaster left the building housing the Unit 4 spent-fuel pool in ruins. The pool was seven stories up in a crumbling, inaccessible building. It “was so radioactive, you couldn’t put people up there,” von Hippel said. “For about a month after Fukushima, people didn’t know how much water was in the pool. They were shooting water up there haphazardly with a hose, trying to drop it by helicopter.” Two weeks after the earthquake and tsunami, the Japanese Atomic Energy Commission secretly conducted a worst-case scenario study of the ongoing disaster. The biggest fear that emerged: that a self-sustaining fire would start in the Unit 4 spent fuel pool, spreading to the nearby, damaged reactors. That, they found, would release radiation requiring evacuations as far away as 150 miles, to the outskirts of Tokyo and its more than 13.4 million residents. “That was the devil’s scenario that was on my mind,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said during a special commission’s 2014 investigation of the accident.“Common sense dictated that, if that came to pass, then it was the end of Tokyo.” What kept the spent fuel rods covered with water in Unit 4 was a miraculous twist of fate: The explosion had jarred open a gate that typically separated the Unit 4 spent fuel pool from an adjacent reactor pool. “Leakage through the gate seals was essential for keeping the fuel in the Unit 4 pool covered with water,” a 2016 report on the Fukushima accident by the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine concluded. “Had there been no water in the reactor well, there could well have been severe damage to the stored fuel and substantial releases of radioactive material to the environment.”

The U.S. nuclear industry sees Fukushima differently — in some ways as a success story. “At Fukushima, you not only had a tsunami, you blew up the buildings … and you still did not drain the pool,” said Rod McCullum, senior director for fuel and decommissioning at the Nuclear Energy Institute, the trade association for nuclear utilities in the U.S. “Those pools and those casks withstood explosions and earthquakes and tsunamis, all on the same day.” A scenario where a fire can occur by the draining of water from a spent-fuel pool “has never been demonstrated,” McCullum said. He noted safety measures added in the U.S. since Fukushima include the ability to provide extra pumps and water supplies, in minutes or hours, should a spent fuel pool become breached and lose water — even if the disaster required that the resources be brought in by air from farther away….

Because nuclear power is much more widely used in Canada — the province of Ontario alone has 20 nuclear reactors at three plants — it also generates much more nuclear waste. In Ontario, nearly 52,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel is stored on-site at nuclear plants along Lakes Huron and Ontario.“There’s a huge amount of high-level, radioactive waste stored right along the water,” said Edwards, the president of the nonprofit Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility Like the U.S., Canada is seeking a long-term storage solution that will involve a central underground repository. Unlike the U.S., the Canadian government is seeking willing hosts, promising jobs and economic activity. …Even if a central repository is one day approved, another complication arises — how to get two generations of the most dangerous industrial waste man has ever created from sites all over the country to one point….

Germany, in the 1980s, tried using an abandoned salt and potash mine to store barrels of nuclear waste over 30 years, the Asse II mine. It’s now prompting a cleanup that may take 30 years and cost nearly $12 billion U.S. dollars. The government has disputed the contention of workers at the mine that they were exposed to excessive levels of radiation, causing an unusual number of cancers….Nuclear power is projected to drop as a percentage of the world’s power generation mix from 10 percent in 2017 to just 5.6 percent by 2050, a report issued by the International Atomic Energy Agency this summer found…

If central repository solutions aren’t found, within years, the re-licensing of some early dry-cask storage facilities will come into play, as they meet a lifespan they were never expected to reach. “The age of nuclear power is winding down, but the age of nuclear waste is just beginning,” Edwards said.

Excerpts from Keith Matheny, 60,000 tons of dangerous radioactive waste sits on Great Lakes shores, Detroit Free Press, Oct. 19, 2018

Fukushima in 2018: Radioactive Mud

Radioactive cesium from the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant continued to flow into Tokyo Bay for five years after the disaster unfolded in March 2011, according to a researcher. Hideo Yamazaki, a former professor of environmental analysis at Kindai University, led the study on hazardous materials that spewed from the nuclear plant after it was hit by the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami on March 11, 2011.

Five months after disaster caused the triple meltdown at the plant, Yamazaki detected 20,100 becquerels of cesium per square meter in mud collected at the mouth of the Kyu-Edogawa river, which empties into Tokyo Bay. In July 2016, the study team detected a maximum 104,000 becquerels of cesium per square meter from mud collected in the same area of the bay, Yamazaki said.

He said cesium released in the early stages of the Fukushima disaster remained on the ground upstream of the river, such as in Chiba Prefecture. The radioactive substances were eventually washed into the river and carried to Tokyo Bay, where they accumulated in the mud, he said.

On a per kilogram basis, the maximum level of radioactivity of cesium detected in mud that was dried in the July 2016 study was 350 becquerels. The government says soil with 8,000 becquerels or lower of radioactive cesium per kilogram can be used in road construction and other purposes. The amount of radioactive cesium in fish in Tokyo remains lower than 100 becquerels per kilogram, the national safety standard for consumption.

Excerpts from NOBUTARO KAJI, Cesium from Fukushima flowed to Tokyo Bay for 5 years, June 7, 2018

Radioactive Beaches: Fukushima at 2017

Six years after the Fukushima nuclear reactor disaster in Japan, radioactive material is leaching into the Pacific Ocean from an unexpected place. Some of the highest levels of radioactive cesium-137, a major by-product of nuclear power generation, are now found in the somewhat salty groundwater beneath sand beaches tens of kilometers away, a new study shows.

Scientists tested for radioactivity at eight different beaches within 100 kilometers of the plant, which experienced three reactor meltdowns when an earthquake and tsunami on March 11, 2011, knocked out its power. Oceans, rivers and fresh groundwater sources are typically monitored for radioactivity following a nuclear accident, but several years following the disaster, those weren’t the most contaminated water sources. Instead, brackish groundwater underneath the beaches has accumulated the second highest levels of the radioactive element (surpassed only by the groundwater directly beneath the reactor).

In the wake of the 2011 accident, seawater tainted with high levels of cesium-137 probably traveled along the coast and lapped against these beaches, proposes study coauthor Virginie Sanial, who did the work while at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts. Some cesium stuck to the sand and, over time, percolated down to the brackish groundwater beneath. Now, the radioactive material is steadily making its way back into the ocean. The groundwater is releasing the cesium into the coastal ocean at a rate that’s on par with the leakage of cesium into the ocean from the reactor site itself, Sanial’s team estimates.

Excerpts from Radioactive material from Fukushima disaster turns up in a surprising place, Science News, Oct. 2, 2017

See also Unexpected source of Fukushima-derived radiocesium to the coastal ocean of Japan

Japan’s Nuclear Waste

Japan seeks final resting place for highly radioactive nuclear waste…[W]ith a number of Japan’s nuclear reactors closed down for good in the wake of the Fukushima accident, the need for a permanent storage site is more pressing than ever.

The disaster, in which a 13-meter tsunami triggered by an off-shore earthquake crippled four reactors at the plant and caused massive amounts of radioactivity to escape into the atmosphere, also underlined just how seismically unstable the Japanese archipelago is and the need for the repository to be completely safe for 100,000 years.

“They have been trying to get this plan of the ground for years and one thing they tried was to offer money to any town or village that agreed to even undergo a survey to see if their location was suitable,” she said. “There were a number of mayors who accepted the proposal because they wanted the money – even though they had no intention of ever agreeing to host the storage site – but the backlash from their constituents was fast and it was furious,” Smith added. “In every case, those mayors reversed their decisions and the government has got nowhere,” she said. “But I fear that means that sooner or later they are just going to make a decision on a site and order the community to accept it.”

The security requirements of the facility will be exacting, the government has stated, and the site will need to be at least 300 meters beneath the surface in a part of the country that is not subject to seismic activity from active faults or volcanoes. It must also be safe from the effects of erosion and away from oil and coal fields. Another consideration is access and sites within 20 km of the coast are preferred.

The facility will need to be able to hold 25,000 canisters of vitrified high-level waste, while more waste will be produced as the nation’s nuclear reactors are slowly brought back online after being mothballed since 2011 for extensive assessments of their safety and ability to withstand a natural disaster on the same scale as the magnitude-9 earthquake that struck Fukushima.

When it is released, the government’s list is likely to include places in Tohoku and Hokkaido as among the most suitable sites, because both are relatively less populated than central areas of the country and are in need of revitalization efforts. Parts of Tohoku close to the Fukushima plant may eventually be chosen because they are still heavily contaminated with radiation from the accident.

Excerpts from Japan seeks final resting place for highly radioactive nuclear waste, Deutsche Welle, May 4, 2017

How to Clean Radioactive Water

Russia’s nuclear energy giant Rosatom’s subsidiary RosRAO has created a prototype water decontamination plant for use at Tokyo Electric Power Co. Holdings’ Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station — the site of Japan’s largest nuclear disaster in March 2011. The scrubbing facility, unveiled in June 2014, is capable of removing tritium, or radioactive hydrogen, from nuclear-tainted water, something beyond the capabilities of the Fukushima plant’s current cleanup equipment. Distillation and electrolysis isolate and concentrate the isotope, which is then locked away in titanium. Experiments under conditions similar to those on the ground reportedly show the technology cutting wastewater’s radioactive material content to one-6,000th the initial level, making it safe for human consumption or release into the ocean.

Duplicating the facility near the Fukushima site and running it for the five years necessary to process 800,000 cu. meters of contaminated water would cost around $700 million in all. Companies in Japan and the U.S. are at work on their own facilities for tritium disposal, but the Russian plan’s cost and technological capability make it fully competitive, according to the project’s chief.

Rosatom has made other overtures to Japan. Executives from a mining and chemical unit have visited several times this year for talks with Japanese nuclear companies, aiming to cooperate on decommissioning the Fukushima plant and upgrading a reprocessing plant in Aomori Prefecture for spent nuclear fuel. Russia has amassed a wealth of expertise dealing with damaged nuclear reactors in the wake of the Chernobyl disaster, and would like Japan to draw on that knowledge, the subsidiary’s chief executive said.

Revving up nuclear technology exports is essential to re-energizing Russia’s domestic industry and breaking free of dependence on the resource sector, Moscow has decided. The nuclear business, along with the space industry, is one of the few tech-intensive sectors where the country is internationally competitive. President Vladimir Putin has leaned more heavily on leaders in Europe and emerging countries in recent years to agree to deals with Russia’s nuclear companies.

In Japan, the public has grown wary of nuclear energy since the accident, leaving demand for new plants in the country at next to nil. Yet Japan has more than 10 reactors slated for decommissioning, creating a market worth up to 1 trillion yen ($9.42 billion) by some calculations. Russia aims to use cooperation on the Fukushima plant to crack the broader market and grow its influence, a source at a French nuclear energy company said…

But Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe nevertheless visited Russia in May 2016 for top-level talks despite U.S. objections, eager to make progress on territorial disputes over islands north of Hokkaido. Preparation is underway for another summit in the far-eastern city of Vladivostok in September 2016, as well as a visit by Putin to Japan before the year is out.
Excerpts from TAKAYUKI TANAKA, Japan nuclear cleanup next target in Russian economic offensive, Nikkei Asian Review, July 24, 2016

Fukushima Waste or Trash?

The Chiba Municipal Government of Japan on June 28, 2016 filed for Environment Ministry approval to lift the radioactive designation for waste stored in the city that was contaminated by the Fukushima reactor meltdowns five years ago. This marked the first application in Japan seeking to lift the radioactive designation for waste tainted by the 2011 meltdowns at Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc.’s Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant. The move came after the city found that levels of radioactive materials in the designated waste are lower than the national designation standards of over 8,000 becquerels per kilogram.

At present, designated radioactive waste generated by the nuclear disaster is stored in 12 prefectures in eastern Japan, including Tokyo.

In Chiba, 7.7 tons of designated waste is currently stored at a waste disposal center.The lifting of the designation will allow the city to dispose of the waste the same way as general waste…

Excerpt from Chiba wants radioactive designation lifted from Fukushima-contaminated waste, The Japan Times, June 29, 2016

Fukushima Waste Disposal under Ocean Floor

The industry ministry will consider the feasibility of burying high-level radioactive waste from nuclear power plants under the seabed, which a working panel said Dec. 11, 2015 could be a “highly appropriate” solution. In an interim report on disposal methods of highly contaminated materials from spent nuclear fuel, the panel said such waste could be disposed of in adjacent waters within 20 kilometers of the coastline.

It called the disposal method relatively realistic because the circulation of groundwater at sea is not as strong as on land. The panel said the site should be created in adjacent waters so that nuclear waste can easily be transported by ships. The panel included the under-the-seabed disposal plan in nearby waters as a viable option for the final disposal site.

Based on this proposal, the ministry will set up an expert panel in January 2016 to discuss what specific technical challenges lay ahead. The expert panel will discuss locations of active faults under the seabed and the impact of sea level changes to evaluate the feasibility of the project. It is expected to issue its recommendations by next summer.

While the government has encouraged municipalities to submit candidate sites for nuclear waste disposal, it is being forced to rethink this policy because no local government has come forward to provide a realistic disposal site. Instead, it will hand-pick the “candidate sites from scientific perspectives” and unilaterally request local governments to comply with its research and inspection efforts.

Japan to consider ocean disposal of nuclear waste, THE ASAHI SHIMBUN, Dec. 12, 2015

Population Resettlement at Fukushima: who dares?

By the time Fukushima prefecture finishes the task of decontaminating houses and farmland around the Dai-ichi plant, it will have spent an estimated $50 billion on the work. Some argue it would have been wiser to have spent the money on resettling former residents elsewhere. Already many of the 80,000 or so people displaced from the areas around the plant have begun new lives. Those moving back are mainly elderly. Local officials expect that half of the evacuees, especially those with children who are more vulnerable to radiation, may never return.

Fear of radiation, and distrust of data from the government and from the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), the Dai-ichi operator, on the risk it poses, are the biggest reasons. On October 20th, 2015 it was announced that a worker who had helped to contain the accident had developed cancer linked to the meltdown. It was the first such diagnosis, but a recent medical study found a huge leap in cases of thyroid cancer among children and adolescents in Fukushima prefecture since the catastrophe.

Public faith in Japan’s institutions suffered a severe blow as a result of the government’s bungled response to the accident in 2011. So when officials of Tamura city wanted to open the Miyakoji district in 2013, residents resisted and demanded more decontamination work.

A year after the lifting of the evacuation order on his village, Yuko Endo, the mayor of Kawauchi, says distrust is so widespread that he doubts his community will return even near to its former size. But he has visited the area around Chernobyl in Ukraine, the site of the world’s worst nuclear disaster 29 years ago. He says the sight there of abandoned villages resembling graveyards has stiffened his resolve to rebuild. Those who have now returned are still deeply sceptical about the assurances they receive. Many ask why, for instance, if the soil is safe, they must take their locally grown produce to be checked for radiation.

There is a particular ray of hope in Naraha—more of one than is evident in Miyakoji and Kawauchi. The town will benefit from jobs related to the decommissioning of the nearby nuclear plants, including Dai-ni, which got through the earthquake and tsunami relatively unscathed. Another of Naraha’s immediate projects is to erect new streetlights. It will be helped by dollops of government aid. Mr Matsumoto, the mayor, talks of luring people back by making his town much more attractive than it was before. But for now, many streetlights do not even work. It is dark at night and the atmosphere is eerie.

Nuclear Power in Japan: Back to the Nuclear Zone, Economist, Oct. 24, 2015, at 39

Fukushima in Singapore: nuclear accidents

In Asia, plans have been delayed but not derailed. China and India, between them, have almost 50 nuclear plants in operation and are building even more. In Southeast Asia, Vietnam could have its first power reactors by 2020. Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia have also made plans.

“Southeast Asia is quasi-completely dependent on fossil fuels,” said Professor Arnoud De Meyer, President of Singapore Management University….Nuclear-based energy can add security and stability to the region’s source of energy. For Singapore, 95 per cent of its electricity comes from natural gas powered plants. Its cost is tied to oil prices. Experts say Singapore’s choice, although the cleanest among fossil fuels, is also an expensive choice….This is because the cost associated with importing natural gas to run Singapore’s power plants is also higher….

In 2010, Singapore embarked on an extensive study of whether nuclear-based electricity could be added to its energy mix. Two years later, it concluded that nuclear risks for Singapore outweighed the benefits. “It was all to do with size,” said Professor Tim White, co-director of Nanyang Technological University’s Energy Research Institute. “The first factor was that we did not really need a very large single nuclear reactor. Singapore just does not have that need for energy. So we would have had to look at modular designs, but none of those designs are actually operating at the moment – at least for power. So Singapore did not want to be the first one off the rack to take these new designs.

“The other concern was that after Fukushima, it was realised that the exclusion zone around the reactor was in fact as large as Singapore. So that meant one Fukushima accident in Singapore and that’s the end of the country. …But the study also concluded that Singapore needs to build up its nuclear knowledge and capability. In 2014, the government announced it would set aside S$63 million over five years for the Nuclear Safety Research and Education Programme. The programme would train local scientists and engineers in three key areas – radiochemistry, radiobiology and risk assessment

“Even if Singapore would never have electricity generation by nuclear sources, countries around us will do it, or may well do it,” said Prof De Meyer. “But nuclear radiation is not something that stops at borders. If there is an accident or a problem, Singapore will be automatically influenced by it.,,,

But first, one expert says ASEAN needs a regulatory framework to address transboundary issues such as the management of nuclear fuel, waste and risk management….“If something happens, for example, in Indonesia’s nuclear facility, which will be built very close to Singapore, it will affect the whole country,” said Associate Professor Sulfikar Amir from NTU’s School of Humanities and Social Sciences.

Excerpts from Monica Kotwani, Singapore must be prepared to handle nuclear developments: Experts, Channel NewsAsia, 27 Sep 2015

Do Not Forget Fukushima

The nuclear disaster was a sensitive subject at the 3rd UN World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction for Civil Society that took place in Sendai, Japan, March 2015 . Masaaki Ohashi, the co-chair of Japan Civil Society Organization Coalition (JCC) a coalition of humanitarian NGOs formed ahead of the summit, praised the new Sendai disaster reduction framework for stating clearly that it applies to man-made and technological hazards – which covers nuclear power – as well as natural hazards.

He and others also noted the importance of an official presentation made at the conference about the lessons learned from the Fukushima crisis. “The Japanese government, represented by the Cabinet Office, has clearly indicated that they are breaking away from the ‘safety’ myth around nuclear power plants, so we’re seeing a step forward,” said Takeshi Komino, general secretary of aid agency CWS Japan.

“Our preparedness (for Fukushima) was totally inefficient – we assumed the incident would affect a 10 km radius from the plant, but it was more than 30 km,” he said.The operation to evacuate people living in the danger zone was confused and not enough support was provided, he said. Failings meant that some hospital patients died at evacuation centres, he noted.A disaster prevention and evacuation plan has since been drawn up for 550,000 people, Yamamoto said. The government is continuing with its decontamination work, and is monitoring health in Fukushima, offering tests for thyroid cancer to those aged 18 and under, he added.

Civil society groups supporting Fukushima residents still struggling with the aftermath of the crisis launched a booklet at the Sendai conference containing 10 key lessons from the disaster, available in several languages including English.,,Komino of CWS Japan said it should be up to countries and communities to decide whether they want nuclear power, but “we are against the creation of the safety myth”. “Pro-active risk identification and risk disclosure to the communities prior to the installation of such facilities is critical,” he emphasised.

JCC2015’s Ohashi said that, as the Japanese government aims to export nuclear energy technology to developing countries, it bears a “producer’s responsibility” to share its knowledge about the risks and how to deal with them….

For example, in some countries that have shown interest in nuclear power, such as Bangladesh and Thailand, it may be difficult for people to shut themselves inside concrete buildings in the event of an accident. And in others, low literacy levels make written public education materials less useful than comic strip versions. Takeuchi questioned the legitimacy of suggesting that nuclear emergencies could really be prevented. “Even if you can put risk reduction measures in place, it would cost a ridiculous amount,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in Fukushima…

Of the 160,000 people who left their homes after the nuclear accident, around 120,000 are still classified as evacuees. Some remain in cramped temporary accommodation, in prefabricated buildings erected on parks and other public land. In places like Iwaki City, south of the evacuation zone, the influx of displaced people seeking new homes and jobs has stirred resentment among residents Even though local officials have made preparations to revitalize empty towns and villages once they are decreed safe, there is concern that only older generations will want to return, raising questions about their future viability.

Excerpts from MEGAN ROWLING , Japan wants to share the lessons it learned from the Fukushima nuclear disaster, Business Insider Australia, Mar. 27, 2015

70 000 Nuclear Refugees: Fukushima

The first three of Fukushima Dai-ichi’s six reactors melted down in March 2011 and the fourth was damaged. TEPCO’s early guess was that decommissioning would take 30-40 years. That is certainly optimistic.

Engineers are grappling with problems with little precedent. Akira Ono, the plant manager, says cameras have begun peeking into the first reactor to check the state of 100 tonnes of molten fuel. A robot needs to be developed to extract the fuel. Last October the utility pushed back the start of this removal work by five years, to 2025. Dale Klein, a former chairman of America’s Nuclear Regulatory Commission, says that the schedule for decommissioning the plant is pure supposition until engineers figure out how to remove all the fuel.

One victory for engineers is with reactor four. Late last year the last of 1,535 highly toxic fuel rods was plucked from the spent-fuel pool a year ahead of schedule. The fear was that the complex could not withstand another strong earthquake. Solutions create new problems. Water is pumped in to keep melted uranium at the bottom of reactors one, two and three from overheating. A purification system, known on-site as the “seven samurai”, is struggling to keep up with the flow of contaminated water being produced—370,000 tonnes and rising is stored in vast tanks. Even when the worst nuclides are filtered out, TEPCO will face huge opposition with plans to dump the water into the Pacific.

Then there is the ice wall. TEPCO is attempting to freeze the ground in a huge ring around the four damaged reactors to prevent toxins from reaching the groundwater and flowing into the sea. Workers have dug vast holes and filled them with coolant. In May they will begin refrigerating the coolant to up to -40ºC. Whether the wall can take another big earthquake or work in the baking summer is not proven. The cost for this so far: ¥32 billion ($272m).

Meanwhile, a lower-tech clean-up is taking place beyond the Dai-ichi site over a big swathe of Fukushima’s rolling countryside. Armed with Geiger counters, men in mechanical diggers or with shovels are skimming off contaminated soil. Once the land is clean, at least some residents have a hope of returning home—71,000 nuclear refugees remain in temporary housing. But it could take years.

The price tag for the whole clean-up is as uncertain as its duration. For one, decontamination costs depend on lowering annual radiation to 1 millisievert, a goal now widely seen as unrealistic, says Tatsujiro Suzuki, a former vice-chairman of the Japan Atomic Energy Commission.

TEPCO says decommissioning Dai-ichi’s four damaged reactors will cost ¥980 billion, but that does not include the clean-up, fuel storage or compensation. On a broader reckoning, the Japan Centre for Economic Research, a private research institute, puts the bill over the next decade at ¥5.7 trillion-¥20 trillion, but that still excludes compensation to the fisheries and farming industries. A still broader calculation by the same institute puts the entire cost of the disaster at ¥40 trillion-¥50 trillion. Thanks to government bail-outs, the company that so mismanaged Fukushima Dai-ichi carries on. It even says it will make a profit this year.

Fukushima Daiichi: Mission impossible, Economist, Feb.7, 2015, at 36

Interim Disposal of Fukushima Nuclear Waste

Fukushima Prefecture is set to accept the construction of an interim facility to store radioactive waste from cleanup work due to the nuclear disaster, advancing the stalled process of decontaminating the affected areas. The prefectural government has decided to shoulder the difference between the appraised value of land in Okuma and Futaba, where the structure will be built, and the price it would have fetched before the 2011 accident at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant.

The decision came after landowners insisted that the land should be bought at a fair market value because the current appraisals are much lower than pre-disaster estimates. Consent from local governments is expected to move forward the central government’s plan to start transporting radioactive soil and other contaminated waste to the storage site in January.

Okuma and Futaba host the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant. The residents of the two towns are still living as evacuees due to high levels of radiation in their hometowns. Talks between local officials and the central government over the planned facility reached an impasse after Environment Minister Nobuteru Ishihara enraged landowners with a comment in June. “In the end, it will come down to money,” Ishihara said, referring to efforts to gain local approval for the storage facilities. Residents were angry because of the implication they could be easily bought.

The stalemate threatened to jeopardize the entire decontamination operation in the prefecture since the storage site is indispensable to advance the work to clean up and rebuild the affected communities. In an effort to break the stalemate, the central government on Aug. 8 offered to double the funds to be provided to the local governments to 301 billion yen ($2.9 billion).

Fukushima Prefecture to accept intermediate storage facility for radioactive waste, THE ASAHI SHIMBUN, August 23, 2014

Nuclear Waste: Germany to South Carolina

The U.S. Department of Energy said on June 4, 2014 it will study the environmental risk of importing spent nuclear fuel from Germany that contains highly enriched uranium, a move believed to be the first for the United States. The department said it is considering a plan to ship the nuclear waste from Germany to the Savannah River Site, a federal facility in South Carolina. The 310-acre site already holds millions of gallons of high-level nuclear waste in tanks. The waste came from reactors in South Carolina that produced plutonium for nuclear weapons from 1953 to 1989.

The Energy Department said it wants to remove 900 kilograms (1,984 pounds) of uranium the United States sold to Germany years ago and render it safe under U.S. nuclear non-proliferation treaties. A technique for the three-year process of extracting the uranium, which is contained in graphite balls, is being developed at the site in South Carolina, according to the Energy Department.

[The radioactive waste to be imported to the United States from Germany consists of 152 30-tonne CASTOR casks containing 290,000 graphite balls from the AVR gas-cooled prototype reactor, stored at the Juelich research center [Forschungszentrum Jülich (FZJ)], and 305 CASTOR casks containing 605,000 graphite balls from the THTR-300 reactor, stored at the Ahaus waste site. While the waste contains some US-origin highly enriched uranium (HEU), the amount is unclear as the material was irradiated and has been in storage for over 20 years since the reactors closed.]

Some critics question whether the department has fully developed a clear plan to dispose of the radioactive waste.”They’re proposing to extract the uranium and reuse it as fuel by a process that has never been done before,” said Tom Clements, president of SRS Watch, a nuclear watchdog group in South Carolina….

Sources told Reuters in May that German utilities were in talks with the government about setting up a “bad bank” for nuclear plants, in response to German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s decision to close them all by 2022 after Japan’s Fukushima nuclear disaster.

Excerpt from Harriet McLeod, German nuclear waste may be headed to South Carolina site, Reuters, June 4, 2014

Fukushima Nuclear Waste: the storage plan

The Japan’s Environment Ministry officially announced on December 14, 2013 that the government aims to buy 19 sq. km of land around the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear complex to build facilities for the long-term storage of radioactive and other waste churned up in decontamination work…Under the plan, the government will build storage and volume reduction facilities on land bought around the Fukushima No. 1 plant host towns of Futaba and Okuma, as well as a small facility in Naraha, while utilizing an existing disposal site in Tomioka. Those two towns co-host the Fukushima No. 2 power station.

Up to 28 million cu. meters of waste could be stored in the envisaged facilities, whose total cost is estimated at about ¥1 trillion, the officials said. Providing local consent is secured, the government will take legislative action to ensure that the waste’s final disposal will take place outside the prefecture within 30 years from the start of storage, the ministry said. With the dim prospects of building interim storage facilities delaying decontamination of areas affected by the March 2011 nuclear disaster, the government hopes to start using the planned facilities in January 2015. Desperate to begin construction in April, the government will seek ¥100 billion in the fiscal 2014 budget for related expenses, including the cost of acquiring the land, ministry officials said.

Ministry unveils plan to buy 19 sq. km of land around Fukushima No. 1 for waste storage, Japan Times, Dec. 14, 2013

How to Falsify Radiation Levels: Japan

Japan’s Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare is investigating a report that workers at the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant were told to use lead covers in order to hide unsafe radiation levels, an official said.The alleged incident happened December 1, nine months after a major earthquake and tsunami ravaged northern Japan and damaged the plant.”We’ll firmly deal with the matter once the practice is confirmed to constitute a violation of any law,” said the ministry official, who could not be named in line with policy. An official with the plant’s operator, TEPCO, said the company received a report of the alleged incident Thursday from subcontractor Tokyo Energy & Systems. The report said a second subcontractor, Build-Up, created the lead covers and ordered workers to use them over their dosimeters, pocket-size devices used to detect high radiation levels.The TEPCO official could also not be named in line with policy. okyo Energy & Systems said in its report that the workers never used the covers, the TEPCO official said. Japan’s Asahi Shimbun newspaper, however, reported Saturday that while some workers refused the orders to use the lead covers, nine others did use them for several hours.

The newspaper’s report cited plant workers, who described the lead covers as fitting snugly over the dosimeters inside the breast pockets of the workers’ protection suits.

TEPCO told CNN it ordered Tokyo Energy & Systems Inc. to conduct an investigation and is awaiting a reply.

Report: Japan nuclear workers told to hide radiation levels, CNN, July 21, 2012