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The Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Catastrophe

Heckler20 said:
Pietro_Mercurios said:
Where are all the giant robots when we need them?
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Fighting Godzilla in Tokyo bay before long, based on what was mentioned above.
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I must admit, that first floor spent fuel pool, has been worrying me since I read about two years ago.
 
Who the hell builds a pool for insanely dangerous materials on the first floor?

And is that a UK first floor or a US first floor? That one always catches me out in computer games. :?
 
More links to more information about Fukushima, its effects on people and the environment, near or far, than you could possibly wish to know.

http://enenews.com/

People who advocate nuclear power should think again.
 
Safety ignored, wages race to the bottom, fraud, yakuza involvement.

Fukushima whistleblower exposes yakuza connections, exploitation of cleanup workers
http://rt.com/news/fukushima-workers-vi ... akuza-730/
Published time: October 25, 2013 15:16 Get short URL

Workers wearing protective suits and masks are seen next to the No.4 reactor at Tokyo Electric Power Company's (TEPCO) tsunami-crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Fukushima prefecture (Reuters/Issei Kato)

Revelations from a Fukushima cleanup worker-turned-whistleblower have exposed the plant’s chaotic system of subcontractors, their alleged mafia connections and the super-exploitation of indigent workers doing this dangerous work.

The allegations, contained in an investigative report by Reuters, have also exposed deeply-rooted problems within Japan’s nuclear industry as a whole. In the report, detailing the everyday realities of workers at the stricken facility, Reuters interviewed an estimated 80 casual workers and managers. The most common complaint voiced was the cleanup effort’s utter dependence on subcontractors – which it is alleged endangered not just workers’ rights, but also their lives.

Tetsuya Hayashi, a 41-tyear-old construction worker by trade, applied for a job at the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, after he suspected that the plant was in deeper trouble than it was willing to admit. The $150 billion cleanup effort, which is expected to last several decades into the future, has already required up to 50,000, mostly casual workers.

However, Hayashi only lasted two weeks on the job, as it became apparent that the vast network of subcontractors involved in the cleanup efforts could not care less for his rights (or his health), while Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO), the plant’s operator, was doing little except giving subcontractors a slap on the wrist.

Hired to monitor the exposure to radiation of plant workers leaving the job during the summer of 2012, Hayashi was assigned to the most bio-hazardous sector and given a protective anti-radiation suit. However, even with the suit on, we exceeded his safe annual radiation quota in less than an hour.

The subcontractor who hired Hayashi was not following nuclear safety rules, according to exposure guidelines by the International Atomic Energy Agency, Reuters reported.

Furthermore, after Hayashi’s first two-week period of employment, he suspected that his passbook, a document showing the extent of a worker’s exposure to radiation, had been falsified by his employer, RH Kogyo, to reflect that he had been hired by a company higher up on the contractor food chain. The passbook shows that Suzushi Kogyo employed him from May to June 2012, while another firm, Take One, employed him for a brief 10 days in June. The truth was that RH Kogyo had given him a one-year contract.

"My suspicion is that they falsified the records to hide the fact that they had outsourced my employment," Reuters reported Hayashi as saying.

The above was the start of his troubles.

"I felt cheated and entrapped…I had not agreed to any of this," Hayashi told the news agency.
After complaining to a higher-level contractor, Hayashi was fired. When he complained to labor regulators, his plea went unanswered for a year. He landed another job at the plant, building a concrete foundation for the cooling tanks used to hold nuclear fuel rods.

Workers wearing protective suits and masks are seen next to the No.4 reactor at Tokyo Electric Power Company's (TEPCO) tsunami-crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Fukushima prefecture (Reuters/Issei Kato)Workers wearing protective suits and masks are seen next to the No.4 reactor at Tokyo Electric Power Company's (TEPCO) tsunami-crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Fukushima prefecture (Reuters/Issei Kato)

The job was meant to pay $1,500 a month, but a third of his earnings were skimmed off by the subcontractor, Reuters cited him as saying. The problem is common to many of the thousands of cleanup workers, with little hope of TEPCO restoring any justice, according to the report. This is because Asia’s largest power utility is only the tip of an iceberg of firms, which has been the main complaint from workers associated with the cleanup. While TEPCO is in charge of the cleanup as a whole, it also comprises four giant Japanese corporations, otherwise known as the ‘Big Four’: Kajima, Obayashi, Shimizu Corp and Taisei Corp. These in turn provide hundreds of companies with funds and projects around the Fukushima prefecture, which end up receiving little to no supervision.

Critics of the plant’s cleanup say that this unregulated hiring of workers through subcontractors opens them to the risk of rights violations, extortion and blackmail from organized crime syndicates. But the lawyers of workers from around the Fukushima prefecture say that even that is a good deal compared to being unemployed.

While neither the eight main subcontractors nor the plant’s operator could be reached for comment on Hayashi’s case, TEPCO’s general manager for nuclear power, Masayuki Ono, told Reuters that the company “[signs] contracts with companies based on the cost needed to carry out a task… the companies then hire their own employees taking into account our contract. It’s very difficult for us to go in and check their contracts.”

After being advised by a journalist, Hayashi claims to have kept copies of his work records, including pictures and videos to back up his story.

A worker shortage crisis continues to deepen at the same time – both inside the plant throughout the surrounding Fukushima prefecture. Government data suggests that the number of job openings exceeds the number of applicants by 25 percent.

But despite research suggesting that raising the wages could bolster employment, TEPCO remains under pressure from the government to boost profits by March 2014. In response, the power utility has cutting workers’ wages at the plant by 20 percent.

In this race to the bottom over workers’ rights and pay, many subcontractors with allegedly questionable connections gained control of the impoverished Fukushima prefecture’s market for cleanup jobs. It is those companies that have taken advantage of the staggering shortage of cleanup workers and allowed companies associated with the plant with alleged ties with Japan’s organized crime syndicates, the yakuza, to flourish. And there are close to 50 gangs affiliated with three major syndicates in the prefecture alone – a fact that had an effect on the local labor market long before the tragedy of March 2011.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe (L) sees off workers leaving for a patrol of tanks containing radioactive water after greeting them at the emergency operation center of the Tokyo Electric Power Co. (AFP Photo/Japan Pooll)Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe (L) sees off workers leaving for a patrol of tanks containing radioactive water after greeting them at the emergency operation center of the Tokyo Electric Power Co. (AFP Photo/Japan Pooll)

With subcontractors only focused on their own bottom line, their activities are not scrutinized by any governing authority. Worst of all, the subcontractors often have little or no experience in the nuclear cleanup sector.

A survey earlier this year revealed that close to 70 percent of small firms provided with decontamination work contracts did not follow labor regulations. The fact was reported by the labor ministry in July.

But Japanese Economy Minister Toshimitsu Motegi, who is in charge of decommissioning the plant, has claimed that he can only go so far in telling TEPCO to improve workers’ conditions. "To get work done, it's necessary to cooperate with a large number of companies," he said.

When a police task force was set up to target criminal involvement in the cleanup efforts, huge amounts of money were found to have been embezzled. But akin to TEPCO’s apparent inability to supervise any activities outside its own immediate agreement with the government, a spokesman for Obayashi, one of the Big Four, claimed that the corporation “did not notice” that one of its subcontractors was hiring workers from the yakuza.

Obayashi pointed instead to its deals with subcontractors, in which they “have clauses on not cooperating with organized crime.”

Fukushima reliant on cheap labor
TEPCO is also finding that decommissioning Fukushima is a particularly cumbersome task and a nightmare to oversee. The cooling system alone requires thousands of workers to daily maintain its operation, and has to deal with the equivalent of 130 Olympic-sized stadiums full of contaminated water each day. A total of 12,000 workers will need to be hired before 2015, TEPCO forecasts. That is in comparison to slightly more than 8,000 workers currently registered at the plant. Recently that number was 6,000.

Making things even more complicated, the problems faced by Fukushima’s chaotic labor market have their roots dating back all to the 1970s.

Japan’s nuclear industry has been relying on cheap labor for over four decades, often recruiting workers from impoverished areas around Tokyo and Osaka, which are awash with indigent men seeking employment. Hayashi is but one of an estimated 50,000 workers hired so far for the clean-up. These indigent workers, known colloquially as “nuclear gypsies,” are easy targets for subcontractors looking to hire workers on the cheap.

“Working conditions in the nuclear industry have always been bad,” Reuters cited Saburo Murata, deputy director of Osaka’s Chuo Hospital, as saying. “Problems with money, outsourced recruitment, lack of proper health insurance - these have existed for decades.”

And the fallout from the March 2011 Fukushima disaster only serves to highlight these long-standing issues.

In the aftermath of the catastrophe, Japan’s parliament agreed to direct funds for the facility’s decontamination and closing. But the bill failed to include existing regulations applied to the construction industry. This detail meant that contractors supplying casual workers were not required to disclose their management practices or be subject to any background checks. Consequently, anyone could become a nuclear contractor, with neither TEPCO nor the government any the wiser.

Workers wearing protective suits and masks are seen next to the spent fuel pool inside the Common Pool Building, where all the nuclear fuel rods will be stored for decommissioning, at the Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) tsunami-crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in the town of Okuma, Fukushima prefecture (AFP Photo/Issei Kato)Workers wearing protective suits and masks are seen next to the spent fuel pool inside the Common Pool Building, where all the nuclear fuel rods will be stored for decommissioning, at the Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) tsunami-crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in the town of Okuma, Fukushima prefecture (AFP Photo/Issei Kato)

The contractors quickly rushed in to secure job deals, and to stay ahead of the competition they often used brokers to do the recruitment for them; naturally, without asking questions.

In some cases, workers in debt to the yakuza would be hired, with brokers deducting their debts direct from their wage packets – often brown envelopes. What would follow was labor at sharply reduced wages, as the men worked tirelessly to pay back the brokers that hired them. The wages they were promised in the beginning are one-third below the national average. TEPCO does not publish its hourly rates, prompting Reuters to raise the issue with the workers themselves. Averaging $12 an hour, pay can dip as low as $6.

Speaking to Reuters, Lake Barrett, a former US nuclear regulator and an advisor to TEPCO, said that changing the system quickly would be impossible.

"There's been a century of tradition of big Japanese companies using contractors, and that's just the way it is in Japan… you’re not going to change that overnight just because you have a new job here, so I think you have to adapt.”

In other cases, workers have been known to be employed by one contractor, while managed by another. Workers complained to one court that they had been packed in small rooms, given their daily bowls of rice and – following a road accident, to get rid of their work uniforms and find separate hospitals to take care of them. And despite almost no oversight and widespread claims of gross rights violations, no company has yet been penalized.

A worker screened for radiation as he enters the emergency operation center at Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO)'s tsunami-crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Fukushima prefecture (Reuters/Issei Kato)A worker screened for radiation as he enters the emergency operation center at Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO)'s tsunami-crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Fukushima prefecture (Reuters/Issei Kato)

The lawyer for a group dedicated to protecting Fukushima workers’ rights explained that they are “scared to sue because they're afraid they will be blacklisted… You have to remember these people often can’t get any other job.”
Stories like the one Hayashi told have led to the emergence of worker rights’ groups, such as the one he is now involved in. "Major contractors that run this system think that workers will always be afraid to talk because they are scared to lose their jobs,” he explained. “But Japan can’t continue to ignore this problem forever.”

The revelations come on the heels of a string of mishaps at the troubled plant – some natural, others caused by human error. The cleanup has a upcoming operation in November – by far the riskiest to date. It will involve the extraction of 1,300 spent nuclear fuel rods from the cooling tanks suspended 18 meters above ground. The task will require absolutely precise coordination from all workers at the power plant, as each rod will be handled manually, not by a computer, as many of the rods are now tilted at an angle or not in their previous location. Any mistake, or a failure to move the rods without collisions, could result in a catastrophe bigger than Chernobyl, says Christopher Busby, an expert on the health effects of ionizing radiation and Scientific Secretary of the European Committee on Radiation Risk. The combined radioactive yield of the fuel rods is more than that of the nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima.
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Fukushima clean up authorities are getting ready to remove the spent fuel rods from the first floor storage facility above reactor 4. Not everybody is happy with the situation.

http://fairewinds.org/media/in-the-...al-apocalyptic-scenario-says-commondreams-org


Fuel Removal – Potential ‘Apocalyptic’ Scenario, says CommonDreams.org

Fairewinds.org. 7. November. 2013


Fairewinds gets a mention in this article on TEPCO’s plans to remove fuel rods at a marathon pace from the notoriuous Reactor 4 in Fukushima:
Arnie Gundersen, a veteran U.S. nuclear engineer and director of Fairewinds Energy Education, warned this summer that “They are going to have difficulty in removing a significant number of the rods,” and said that “To jump to the conclusion that it is going to work just fine is quite a leap of logic.”
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Read more: Fuel Removal From Fukushima’s Reactor 4 Threatens ‘Apocalyptic’ Scenario
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Risky, risky, stuff.
 
Pietro_Mercurios said:
Fukushima clean up authorities are getting ready to remove the spent fuel rods from the first floor storage facility above reactor 4. Not everybody is happy with the situation.
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Well, yeah. I live on the West Coast of the USA. The harbor here faces south, so we miss many climate (and other) troubles. But, if anything big goes wrong as they extract the rods, we're in for it along with the rest of the West Coast, and Japan, of course.

Adding up the populations of California, Oregon, Washington, Alaska, Britsh Columbia--we're talking 50+ million people.

Crap. I'm worried.
 
TEPCO detects record radiation at Fukushima’s reactor 2, new leak suspected
Published time: December 21, 2013 16:06
http://rt.com/news/fukushima-record-radiation-leak-616/

No. 2 reactor buildings of the crippled Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear power plant (AFP Photo / Pool)

TEPCO has found a record 1.9 million becquerels per liter of beta ray-emitting radioactive substances at its No.2 reactor. Also radioactive cesium was detected in deeper groundwater at No.4 unit’s well, as fears grow of a new leak into the ocean.

The level of beta ray-emitting radioactivity in groundwater around the crippled Fukushima reactor No. 2 reactor has been rising since November, NHK reported.

Previous the highest level – 1.8 million becquerels (bq/liter), of beta-ray sources per liter - was registered at reactor No.1 on December 13.

Meanwhile, TEPCO’s latest examination of deeper groundwater beneath the #4 reactor's well has raised new concerns that there might be another source of radioactive substances leakage into the ocean.

For the first time, the analysis of water samples taken from a layer 25 meters beneath the No. 4 reactor's well that is facing the ocean has revealed radioactivity in groundwater.

TEPCO investigators detected 6.7 bq/liter of Cesium 137 and 89 bq/liter of strontium as well as other beta ray-emitting radioactive substances.

However, the company’s officials said that it is early to talk about a hotspot of radiation leak and more examinations are needed to prove that. TEPCO suggested that current numbers could be wrong because radioactive substances may have been mistakenly mixed during the process of getting the sample.

Leakage of radiation-contaminated water has been the major threat to Japan’s population and environment from the very beginning of the Fukushima disaster in March 2011.

Only in late July 2013 did TEPCO acknowledge the fact that contaminated water is escaping from basements and trenches of the Fukushima plant into the ocean.

Since then, TEPCO reported about two major leaks of highly radioactive water into the ocean from storage tanks – a 300-ton leak in August and 430 liters in October.
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Plumes of mysterious steam rise from crippled nuclear reactor at Fukushima
Published time: January 01, 2014 20:15 Get short URL
http://rt.com/news/fukushima-steam-nuclear-reactor-064/

Fresh plumes of most probably radioactive steam have been detected rising from the reactor 3 building at the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant, said the facility’s operator company.

The steam has been detected by surveillance cameras and appeared to be coming from the fifth floor of the mostly-destroyed building housing crippled reactor 3, according to Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO), the plant’s operator.

The steam was first spotted on December 19 for a short period of time, then again on December 24, 25, 27, according to a report TEPCO published on its website.

The company, responsible for the cleanup of the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl, has not explained the source of the steam or the reason it is rising from the reactor building. High levels of radiation have complicated entry into the building and further inspection of the situation.

Three of the plant’s reactors suffered a nuclear meltdown in March 2011 after the Great East Japan Earthquake and resulting tsunami hit the region. The plant is comprised of six separate water boiling reactors. At the time of the earthquake, reactor number 4 had been de-fueled and reactors 5 and 6 were in cold shutdown for planned maintenance, thereby managing to avoid meltdowns.

Unlike the other five reactors, reactor 3 ran on mixed core containing both uranium fuel and mixed uranium and plutonium oxide, or MOX nuclear fuel. The Reactor 3 fuel storage pond still houses an estimated 89 tons of the plutonium-based MOX nuclear fuel composed of 514 fuel rods.

In a similar incident, small amounts of steam escaped from the reactor 3 building in July 2013, Asahi Shimbun reported. However it was unclear where the steam came from. TEPCO said that radiation levels did not change, adding that the steam could have been caused by rain that found its way to the primary containment of the reactor, and because this vessel was still hot, the water evaporated. On 23 July the steam was seen again coming out of the fifth floor just above the reactor containment, the Japanese newspaper reported.

In November, TEPCO, responsible for the decommissioning of the plant, began the highly risky removal of over 1,500 potentially damaged nuclear fuel rods from reactor 4. The reactor is the most unstable part of the plant as it was offline at the time of the 2011 catastrophe and its core didn't go into meltdown. Instead, hydrogen explosions blew the roof off the building and severely damaged the structure.One of the most dangerous operations attempted in nuclear history was a success as a total of 22 assemblies containing 50 to 70 fuel rods have been transported to a new storage pool. While the extraction of the fuel rods is a significant challenge for TEPCO, a more complex task of removing the cores of the stricken reactors is yet to come.
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I am simply amazed that this is still going on.
Layer upon layer of incompetence.
 
Plumes of mysterious steam rise from crippled nuclear reactor at Fukushima
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Thank god it's mysterious steam. There would be something wrong if it was the normal variety.
 
Yeah, that is what I was thinking.

Do you think its just rain fallen on something hot??
 
Naw, that's nowhere near mysterious enough.

Maybe King Ghidorah is hiding in there snorting the crumbling remains of the fuel rods. :lol:
 
Getting even more bizarre.

‘Duct tape, wire nets’ were used to mend Fukushima water tanks - worker
Published time: January 04, 2014 19:47
Edited time: January 05, 2014 17:11
http://rt.com/news/fukushima-radiation-water-leak-186/

AFP Photo / Kimmasa MayamaAFP Photo / Kimmasa Mayama

As TEPCO began preparations for the cleaning of the drainage system with tons of leaked radioactive water at the Fukushima power plant,a former employee reveals the reason for so many leaks was cost cutting measures such as using duct tape,Asahi reported.

Yoshitatsu Uechi, auto mechanic and tour-bus driver, worked at the devastated nuclear power plant between July 2 and Dec. 6, 2012, according to Asahi Shimbun report. He was one of the 17 workers from Okinawa Prefecture sent to work at the crippled nuclear plant in 2012 to create new places to store contaminated water.

The earthquake in March 2011 triggered a tsunami that hit Japan’s coast, damaging the Fukushima Daiichi plant. The catastrophe caused the meltdown of three nuclear reactors at the facility, leading to the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl.

The water used to cool the reactors has been leaking into the soil and contaminating the ground water on the premises of the nuclear facility, with some escaping into the Pacific Ocean.

The 48 year old Japanese man said that workers were sent to various places in Fukushima, including an area called H3 with high radiation levels.

In one of those cases in October 2012, Uechi was given a task to cover five or six storage tanks without lids in the “E” area close to H3 as it was raining, the Japanese paper reported. When he climbed to the top of the 10-meter-high tank Uechi found white adhesive tape covering an opening of about 30 centimeters. After using a blade to remove the tape he applied a sealing agent on the opening and fit a steel lid fastening it with bolts. According to instructions he was to use four bolts, though the lid had eight bolt holes.

According to the employee, his colleagues later told him that the use of adhesive tape was a usual practice to deal with the problem of sealing in radioactive water.

“I couldn’t believe that such slipshod work was being done, even if it was part of stopgap measures,” Uechi told The Asahi Shimbun.

Among other makeshift cost-cutting measures was the use of second-hand materials. Uechi also said that wire nets were used instead of reinforcing bars during the placement of concrete for storage tank foundations. In addition, waterproof sheets were applied along the joints inside flange-type cylindrical tanks to save on the sealing agent used to join metal sheets of the storage tanks. Rain and snow had washed away the anti-corrosive agent applied around clamping bolts, reducing the sealing effect, Uechi added. According to the Fukushima worker, many of the tanks were later found to be leaking contaminated water.

On Saturday, workers at Fukushima Daiichi began preparations for cleaning the plant’s drainage system that contains more than 20,000 tons of water with high levels of radioactive substances, according to Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), the plant’s operator responsible for the clean-up.

In August, TEPCO detected 2.35 billion becquerels of cesium per liter in the water located in underground passages which is leaking into the groundwater through cracks in the drainage tunnels. The normal level is estimated at 150 becquerels of cesium per liter, according to EU.

The workers are to set up the special equipment to freeze the ground around the reactors, according to TEPCO. The plan includes plunging tubes carrying a coolant liquid deep into the ground that would freeze the ground solid so that no groundwater could pass through it.

Fallout researcher Christina Consolo told RT that the contaminated water issue at the plant is a very difficult problem to solve.

“The water build-up is an extraordinarily difficult problem in and of itself, and as anyone with a leaky basement knows, water always 'finds a way.’

She added that as “the site has been propped up with duct tape and a kick-stand for over two years. Many of their 'fixes' are only temporary, as there are so many issues to address, and cost always seems to be an enormous factor in what gets implemented and what doesn't.”
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Duct tape, that well-known protection against extreme levels of hard ionising radiation. :lol:
 
The story that keeps on giving.

Fukushima radiation reaches 8 times govt standards
Published time: January 11, 2014 09:33
http://rt.com/news/fukushima-radiation- ... ndard-448/

This handout picture taken by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on November 27, 2013 shows review mission members of the IAEA inspecting the crippled Tokyo Electric Power CO. (TEPCO) Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant in the town of Okuma in Fukushima prefecture. (AFP Photo/IAEA)

Nuclear radiation at the boundaries of the stricken Fukushima power plant has now reached 8 times government safety guidelines, TEPCO has said. The firm has been struggling to contain radioactive leaks at Fukushima since the onset over the crisis in 2011.

The levels of nuclear radiation around Fukushima’s No. 1 plant have risen to 8 millisieverts per year, surpassing the government standard of 1 milliseviert per year, reports news site Asahi Shimbun citing Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO).

The Nuclear Regulation Authority held a meeting on Friday aimed at curbing the rising levels of radiation to the south of the plant, which has long been a problem area.

TEPCO told press that the predominant reason behind the sharp increase in radiation at the plant was X-rays coming from storage tanks holding radioactive water that has been leaking from the Fukushima facility.

The water in the tanks contains traces of radioactive strontium along with other substances that react with the materials the tank is composed of, producing X-rays, said officials.

Strontium-90 is a radioactive isotope of strontium produced by nuclear fission with a half-life of 28.8 years.

Radioactive water leaking from the nuclear site at Fukushima has been a pressing concern to the international community, as well as the Japanese population since the outbreak of the crisis in March 2011.

After the discovery of water leaks from the Fukushima plant’s underwater tanks, TEPCO has been siphoning off the contaminated liquid and storing it in tanks.

In an attempt to neutralize the stored water, TEPCO is using a system known as the Advanced Liquid Processing System, or ALPS. The system itself is composed of 14 steel cylinders through which the radioactive water is filtered. The radioactive sludge left behind after the water is cleaned is then transferred to high-integrity containers which are in turn transported to a secure storage facility.

TEPCO plans to clean up all of the tainted water through ALPS by the end of March 2015, but the operation has already run into some difficulties. On Tuesday the crane that lifts the containers to and from the ALPS system stopped working for several days before resuming on Friday.

The Japanese government has so far shelled out $473 million to contain the fallout from the beleaguered plant. Officials have also criticized TEPCO’s “whack-a-mole” to dealing with the nuclear crisis.

The ruling Liberal Democratic Party has put forward the idea of divided the contamination operation between TEPCO and the government. Under the proposal TEPCO would hand over the water purifying operation and the decommissioning of the reactors to a government-affiliated organization, thus allowing the electric power company to concentrate on its management and compensation payments.
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How long before they will have to evacuate Japan?
 
kamalktk said:
Pietro_Mercurios said:
SameOldVardoger said:
How long before they will have to evacuate Japan?
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Not until they've tried the giant robots.
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They already tried the giant robots, but... Godzilla.
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Yeah. They just have to wait a bit for that one to happen. Then they'd evacuate Japan.
 
And on and on. These fish really have fingers.

Fish testing at 124 times over radiation limit caught off Fukushima
http://rt.com/news/fukushima-fish-cesium-radiation-548/
Published time: January 13, 2014 23:28

Reuters / Kim Hong-JiReuters / Kim Hong-Ji

Ecology, Food, Japan, Natural disasters, Nuclear
Fish with deadly levels of radioactive cesium have been caught just off the coast of Fukushima prefecture, as scientists continue to assess the damage caused to the marine food chain by the 2011 nuclear disaster.

One of the samples of the 37 black sea bream specimens caught some 37 kilometers south of the crippled power plant tested at 12,400 becquerels per kilogram of radioactive cesium, making it 124 times deadlier than the threshold considered safe for human consumption, Japan's Fisheries Research Agency announced.

The samples were caught at the mouth of the Niidagawa river in Iwaki, Fukushima Prefecture, on November 17. Two other fish caught there also tested non-safe for human consumption, showing radiations levels of 426 and 197 becquerels per kilogram. The rest of the fish were reportedly within safety limits.

Black sea bream are currently restricted from being fished in Miyagi and Fukushima prefectures and sold for human consumption, as scientists from the Fisheries Research Agency say they plan to investigate the source of the contamination further.

After the Fukushima disaster, Japan lowered its threshold for cesium levels in food from 500 becquerels per kg to 100 becquerels per kilo, making the country’s regulations six times stricter than European Union standards. The record cesium reading was recorded last year when a fish caught near the plant carried 740,000 becquerels of cesium per kilogram.

AFP Photo / Kimimasa MayamaAFP Photo / Kimimasa Mayama


Professor Chris Busby from the Scientific Secretary of the European Committee on Radiation Risk and a member of the UK Department of Health Committee Examining Radiation Risk for Internal Emitters (CERRIE), says that despite a high level of radiation in the marine food chain, Japan so far is the only one dealing with a direct threat.

“The concentrations of radionuclides, which are going to the Pacific or have been injected to the Pacific, by the time they get to the US, and to China and to South East Korea and so on will not be enormously high,” Busby told Voice of Russia.

Yet the scientist warned that nuclear contamination of Japan could result in 400-800 extra cancer cases in Japan in the next fifty years.

“We've already seen some effects in infant mortality and thyroid cancer in Japan,” Busby said. “So I think this is just going to get worse. I think we are going to see a major effect on the general health of the Japanese population in Northern Japan. There's going to be a decrease in the birth rate and an increase in the death rate.”

In the meantime, TEPCO, the operator of the Fukushima nuclear site, reported radiation levels 8 times government safety guidelines. TEPCO told press that the predominant reason behind the sharp increase in radiation at the plant was X-rays coming from storage tanks holding radioactive water that has been leaking from the Fukushima facility.
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Surprise!

Radiation at Fukushima well hits ‘record high’
Published time: January 18, 2014 19:38
http://rt.com/news/japan-fukushima-radiation-high-831/

A Tokyo Electric Power Corp.'s (Tepco) official stands at H4 tank area, at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant in Okuma, Fukushima Prefecture, Japan (AFP Photo / Kimimasa Mayama)

A record high level of beta rays released from radioactive strontium-90 has been detected at the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant beneath the No. 2 reactor's well facing the ocean, according to the facility’s operator.

Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) measured the amount of beta ray-emitting radioactivity at more than 2.7 million becquerels per liter, Fukushima’s operator said as reported in Japanese media. The measurements were taken on Thursday.

There has been a spike of radiation in this area since the beginning of the year. The measurements taken on Monday showed 2.4 million Bq/l, while the results taken on January 9 indicated the amount of beta rays at 2.7 million Bq/l, according to TEPCO’s Friday announcement.

Strontium-90 is a radioactive isotope of strontium produced by nuclear fission with a half-life of 28.8 years. The legal standard for strontium emissions is 30 becquerels per liter.
In March 2011 an earthquake triggered a tsunami that hit Japan’s coast, damaging the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. The catastrophe caused the meltdown of three nuclear reactors at the facility, leading to the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl.

The water used to cool the reactors has been leaking into the soil and contaminating the ground water ever since. Some of the radioactive water has been escaping into the Pacific Ocean.

TEPCO plans solve the problem by setting up special equipment to freeze the ground around the reactors. The works which are to start this month include plunging tubes carrying a coolant liquid deep into the ground. The coolant would freeze the ground solid so that no groundwater could pass through it.

Japan plans to restart world’s biggest nuclear plant
While the company struggles to contain the contaminated water, TEPCO’s president has voiced the possibility of spinning off the clean-up project at the wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant from the rest of the company. This would be an option in the future if the decommissioning runs smoothly, Naomi Hirose said in an interview to Reuters on Saturday.

A spin-off was also proposed by the ruling Liberal Democratic party’s committee overseeing the government bailout of TEPCO in October.

Hirose noted that currently TEPCO has to work on improving the workers conditions at the plant.

"Paying compensation (to evacuees), decontamination, and the work at the Fukushima plant; there is a lot of work to be done ... We have to continue doing this, while maintaining workers' safety, their sense of responsibility, duty and keeping up their morale," he said.

The company’s head added that he was against hiving off the Fukushima decommissioning from the rest of the business until working conditions improve significantly.

On January 15 the government approved TEPCO’s plan to restart four reactors at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant, the biggest nuclear power plant in the world. The utility aims to resume operations at the plant's No. 6 and 7 reactors as early as July.

The plan was met with criticism from the administration of the Niigata Prefecture, where the plant is located. The local governor has repeatedly called for the company’s liquidation.

TEPCO argued that the company may have to raise electricity prices by as much as 10 percent if Kashiwazaki restart is further delayed.
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ramonmercado said:
Surprise!

On January 15 the government approved TEPCO’s plan to restart four reactors at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant, the biggest nuclear power plant in the world. The utility aims to resume operations at the plant's No. 6 and 7 reactors as early as July.
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Oh, good. Another installment of "Disaster Japan" is in the works.
Eeeeeeeeh.
 
Maybe they are right to expect the worse. Who knows what the clowns controlling the plant will do next?

Canadians buying potassium iodide in bulk over fears of Fukushima radiation
Published time: January 23, 2014 19:17
Edited time: January 24, 2014 19:40
http://rt.com/news/british-columbia-fuk ... ation-097/

Potassium iodide pills.(Reuters / Yuriko Nakao)

Accident, Canada, Drugs, Health, Japan, North America, Nuclear, USA
Health officials in the coastal Canadian province of British Columbia are cautioning residents not to try and qualm fears of radioactive contamination by ingesting mass quantities of potassium iodide.

Journalist Dan Fumano of BC’s The Province newspaper wrote this week that potassium iodide pills have been flying off the shelves of area drug stores after reports published on the internet advised people that illnesses brought on by nuclear radiation can be remedied by taking regular doses of the inorganic compound.

The British Columbians buying those pills, Fumano wrote, are largely fearful that nuclear waste leaked into the Pacific Ocean three years ago by the destruction of the Fukushima power plant across the pond in Japan is washing up on their shores.

But while potassium iodide does indeed possess its fair share of positive qualities, experts say ingesting those pills is unnecessary and could cause lead to potentially dangerous overdoses.

Fumano wrote that potassium iodide sales in BC surged immediately after the Fukushima disaster, and have again in recent months started to climb. At least one pharmacist he spoke with said she’s been sending people out of the door of her drug store when they request the quasi-cure-all pills.

“There were other instances where rumors have been rampant and misinformed the public, but nothing to the degree that (Fukushima) has,” pharmacist Pam Magee told him.

According to Magee, customers have been coming into her store asking for potassium iodide doses that are hundreds of times over the recommended intake.

“I only know the litany of pathologies that can ensue with this kind of dosing,” she told Fumano. “I always warn people against it and they often go away mad and exasperated by my stupidity.”

Other experts in the field agree. The Health Physics Society says on their website that Kl — the scientific shorthand for potassium iodide — “has been erroneously represented as a ‘magic bullet’ of radiation protection.”

“KI, if taken properly, only protects against internal radiation from radioiodine taken into the body,” the website warns. “It will not protect against external radiation or internal radiation from radionuclides other than radioiodine,” and even then will only spare the human thyroid from any radiation-induced effects.

Immediately after the Fukushima disaster, Dr. Glenn Braunstein of the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, California told the Huffington Post that the amount of radiation from Japan that would ever end up across the ocean would likely be “less than the radiation one could get in flying from Los Angeles to New York.”

"I think I would describe it as subclinical panic," Braunstein added at the time. "I think there's a lot of concern out there because radiation -- you can't see it, you can't feel it, but everybody knows it has potentially disastrous results."

Three years later, that panic is again on the rise in British Columbia.

“If I lived next door to Fukushima, or somewhere in that area, I might well consider having KI, or potassium iodide, in my medicine chest. But not here,” BC health officer Dr. Perry Kendall added to The Province. “We wouldn’t recommend it, because it wouldn’t convey any benefit, and it might convey some risk.”

According to the US Food and Drug Administration, potassium iodide overdoses can cause shortness of breath, difficult swallowing, fever and joint pain, and could warrant immediate medical attention in some cases.

Meanwhile, British Columbians aren’t the only ones in the area concerned. The Department of Environmental Conservation in the adjacent state of Alaska announced on Thursday this week that officials there are not actively testing fish for nuclear radiation amidst similar fears, but that data from BC authorities and federal agencies say so far there isn’t anything to worry about.
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The Ocean is broken

Well, it sounds like we've finally done it. Effectively made about 90% of the human race die i mean. Oh no, not like next year, but maybe 10-15 years from now, when the currents and tides have spread this radioactive shit to all marine environments. In the meantime let's just carry on fishing, acting normal, not reporting any of this stuff. I mean whats the point of worrying folks, right?

http://www.theherald.com.au/story/18484 ... is-broken/

IT was the silence that made this voyage different from all of those before it.

Not the absence of sound, exactly.

The wind still whipped the sails and whistled in the rigging. The waves still sloshed against the fibreglass hull.

And there were plenty of other noises: muffled thuds and bumps and scrapes as the boat knocked against pieces of debris.

What was missing was the cries of the seabirds which, on all previous similar voyages, had surrounded the boat.

The birds were missing because the fish were missing.

Exactly 10 years before, when Newcastle yachtsman Ivan Macfadyen had sailed exactly the same course from Melbourne to Osaka, all he'd had to do to catch a fish from the ocean between Brisbane and Japan was throw out a baited line.

"There was not one of the 28 days on that portion of the trip when we didn't catch a good-sized fish to cook up and eat with some rice," Macfadyen recalled.

But this time, on that whole long leg of sea journey, the total catch was two.

No fish. No birds. Hardly a sign of life at all.

"In years gone by I'd gotten used to all the birds and their noises," he said.

"They'd be following the boat, sometimes resting on the mast before taking off again. You'd see flocks of them wheeling over the surface of the sea in the distance, feeding on pilchards."

But in March and April this year, only silence and desolation surrounded his boat, Funnel Web, as it sped across the surface of a haunted ocean.

North of the equator, up above New Guinea, the ocean-racers saw a big fishing boat working a reef in the distance.

"All day it was there, trawling back and forth. It was a big ship, like a mother-ship," he said.

And all night it worked too, under bright floodlights. And in the morning Macfadyen was awoken by his crewman calling out, urgently, that the ship had launched a speedboat.

"Obviously I was worried. We were unarmed and pirates are a real worry in those waters. I thought, if these guys had weapons then we were in deep trouble."

But they weren't pirates, not in the conventional sense, at least. The speedboat came alongside and the Melanesian men aboard offered gifts of fruit and jars of jam and preserves.

"And they gave us five big sugar-bags full of fish," he said.

"They were good, big fish, of all kinds. Some were fresh, but others had obviously been in the sun for a while.

"We told them there was no way we could possibly use all those fish. There were just two of us, with no real place to store or keep them. They just shrugged and told us to tip them overboard. That's what they would have done with them anyway, they said.

"They told us that his was just a small fraction of one day's by-catch. That they were only interested in tuna and to them, everything else was rubbish. It was all killed, all dumped. They just trawled that reef day and night and stripped it of every living thing."

Macfadyen felt sick to his heart. That was one fishing boat among countless more working unseen beyond the horizon, many of them doing exactly the same thing.

No wonder the sea was dead. No wonder his baited lines caught nothing. There was nothing to catch.

If that sounds depressing, it only got worse.

The next leg of the long voyage was from Osaka to San Francisco and for most of that trip the desolation was tinged with nauseous horror and a degree of fear.

"After we left Japan, it felt as if the ocean itself was dead," Macfadyen said.

"We hardly saw any living things. We saw one whale, sort of rolling helplessly on the surface with what looked like a big tumour on its head. It was pretty sickening.

"I've done a lot of miles on the ocean in my life and I'm used to seeing turtles, dolphins, sharks and big flurries of feeding birds. But this time, for 3000 nautical miles there was nothing alive to be seen."

In place of the missing life was garbage in astounding volumes.

"Part of it was the aftermath of the tsunami that hit Japan a couple of years ago. The wave came in over the land, picked up an unbelievable load of stuff and carried it out to sea. And it's still out there, everywhere you look."

Ivan's brother, Glenn, who boarded at Hawaii for the run into the United States, marvelled at the "thousands on thousands" of yellow plastic buoys. The huge tangles of synthetic rope, fishing lines and nets. Pieces of polystyrene foam by the million. And slicks of oil and petrol, everywhere.

Countless hundreds of wooden power poles are out there, snapped off by the killer wave and still trailing their wires in the middle of the sea.

"In years gone by, when you were becalmed by lack of wind, you'd just start your engine and motor on," Ivan said.

Not this time.

"In a lot of places we couldn't start our motor for fear of entangling the propeller in the mass of pieces of rope and cable. That's an unheard of situation, out in the ocean.

"If we did decide to motor we couldn't do it at night, only in the daytime with a lookout on the bow, watching for rubbish.

"On the bow, in the waters above Hawaii, you could see right down into the depths. I could see that the debris isn't just on the surface, it's all the way down. And it's all sizes, from a soft-drink bottle to pieces the size of a big car or truck.

"We saw a factory chimney sticking out of the water, with some kind of boiler thing still attached below the surface. We saw a big container-type thing, just rolling over and over on the waves.

"We were weaving around these pieces of debris. It was like sailing through a garbage tip.

"Below decks you were constantly hearing things hitting against the hull, and you were constantly afraid of hitting something really big. As it was, the hull was scratched and dented all over the place from bits and pieces we never saw."

Plastic was ubiquitous. Bottles, bags and every kind of throwaway domestic item you can imagine, from broken chairs to dustpans, toys and utensils.

And something else. The boat's vivid yellow paint job, never faded by sun or sea in years gone past, reacted with something in the water off Japan, losing its sheen in a strange and unprecedented way.

BACK in Newcastle, Ivan Macfadyen is still coming to terms with the shock and horror of the voyage.

"The ocean is broken," he said, shaking his head in stunned disbelief.

Recognising the problem is vast, and that no organisations or governments appear to have a particular interest in doing anything about it, Macfadyen is looking for ideas.

He plans to lobby government ministers, hoping they might help.

More immediately, he will approach the organisers of Australia's major ocean races, trying to enlist yachties into an international scheme that uses volunteer yachtsmen to monitor debris and marine life.

Macfadyen signed up to this scheme while he was in the US, responding to an approach by US academics who asked yachties to fill in daily survey forms and collect samples for radiation testing - a significant concern in the wake of the tsunami and consequent nuclear power station failure in Japan.

"I asked them why don't we push for a fleet to go and clean up the mess," he said.

"But they said they'd calculated that the environmental damage from burning the fuel to do that job would be worse than just leaving the debris there."
 
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