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The Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Catastrophe

Russia to develop system to filter radioactive Fukushima water

RosRAO, a subsidiary of Russian nuclear giant Rosatom, is among the three companies selected to build a system to filter radioactive tritium out of the contaminated water collected at the stricken power plant – a task that has so far defied engineers.

Fukushima Daiichi operator TEPCO, which has resorted to erecting thousands of water tanks to contain the toxic run-off from the plant, is already trialing a system that filters 62 radioactive materials. But the Advanced Liquid Processing System (ALPS) does not filter tritium, a mildly radioactive byproduct of nuclear generation, which nonetheless means that water cannot be safely discharged into the Pacific Ocean.

RosRAO, which was built on the foundations of Soviet-era waste disposal research institutions, won the TEPCO tender for a filtration system - alongside US firm Kurion Inc, and GE Hitachi Canada, a joint project between the Japanese and US corporations - beating 26 other companies.

Each of the three contractors will be given 1 billion yen – about $9.5 million – to present a working filter prototype by the March 2016 deadline, and the final value of the contract, which could last for decades, could run into hundreds of million dollars. ...

http://rt.com/news/183532-russia-filter ... ima-water/
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Four subcontractors, working to decommission the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant, are suing the Tokyo Electric Power Company, in the first-ever such case, saying they were never compensated for working in the radioactive area.

According to Japanese media, the lawsuit is demanding the utility company pay a total of ¥91.4 million ($868,000) in “dangerous-work” benefits.

The four male workers, aged between 34 and 65, have been employed since May 2011 to remove radioactive debris at reactor 3 and to patrol tanks containing highly radioactive water. Two of the four men are currently working for the subcontractor at the nuclear plant.

The plaintiffs claim the subcontractor, their direct employer, orally explained that the dangerous-work benefits would be paid – but only one of the workers was paid a small amount, the attorney representing the men said on Monday. ...

http://rt.com/news/184496-fukushima-nuc ... tive-area/
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Three workers at the troubled Fukushima nuclear power plant were hurt during an operation to set up a coolant tank for contaminated water. A 13-meter-high steel construction collapsed on them.

One of the workers has been left in critical condition after being knocked unconscious. He was transported to the hospital from the plant by helicopter, according to a TEPCO spokesman, AFP reported.

A second worker has a broken leg, while the third did not sustain any major injuries.

The plant has been facing the worrying issue of contaminated water leaking into the Pacific Ocean. It is looking into ways to clean the water to later release into the ocean without risk. ...

http://rt.com/news/203171-fukushima-col ... e-injured/
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Sensors at the Fukushima nuclear plant have detected a fresh leak of highly radioactive water to the sea, the plant's operator announced Sunday, highlighting difficulties in decommissioning the crippled plant.

Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) said the sensors, which were rigged to a gutter that pours rain and ground water at the Fukushima Daiichi plant to a nearby bay, detected contamination levels up to 70 times greater than the already-high radioactive status seen at the plant campus.

TEPCO said its emergency inspections of tanks storing nuclear waste water did not find any additional abnormalities, but the firm said it shut the gutter to prevent radioactive water from going into the Pacific Ocean. ...

http://phys.org/news/2015-02-fresh-nuclear-leak-fukushima.html
 
Is it perhaps now time for a better thread title?
I propose: The Fukushima Fukups
 
Daiichi Disaster Developments?

Fukushima Future Floundering?

The Rad Radioactive Reaction? (Mind you, I find nothing about this to be "rad".)
 
A massive food-monitoring programme in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear disaster has provided scientists with a unique look at how radioactivity peaks in different foods after a nuclear spill.

Almost four years since the incident, the first analysis of the data also confirms what multiple studies of Fukushima residents have already shown: few people are likely to have eaten food that exceeded strict Japanese limits on radioactive contamination.

On 11 March 2011, a massive offshore earthquake triggered a tsunami that swamped the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station. Plumes of gas from the reactor released radioactive isotopes into the local area, which were transported farther afield by wind and rain, before falling onto plants and seeping into soil. ...

http://www.nature.com/news/fukushima-data-show-rise-and-fall-in-food-radioactivity-1.17016
 
SAE OCHI SHOULD know better, and she knows she should know better. As the director of internal medicine at Soma Central Hospital, just 30 miles from the Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear power plant that melted down after a tsunami in 2011, part of her job is to monitor local radiation exposure levels. She has screened thousands of people, and only a few showed levels high enough for her most sensitive instruments to detect. She eats locally grown food sold at the supermarket and even the occasional wild berry, which probably does contain a bit of radiation. “When I go hiking, I will eat a berry or two, because it’s only a tiny amount and it looks so delicious,” Ochi says. But then she adds a caveat: “That’s because I have no children.” If Ochi were a parent, she says, she wouldn’t do it—even though she knows local radiation levels are negligible. “All mothers,” she says, “try to take zero risks.”

http://www.wired.com/2015/03/food-fukushima-safe-fear-remains/?mbid=social_twitter
 
Radiation from Japan’s 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster has for the first time been detected along a North American shoreline, though at levels too low to pose a significant threat to human or marine life, scientists said.

Trace amounts of Cesium-134 and Cesium-137 were detected in samples collected on 19 February off the coast of Ucluelet, a small town on Vancouver Island in Canada’s British Columbia, said Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution scientist Ken Buesseler.

“Radioactivity can be dangerous, and we should be carefully monitoring the oceans after what is certainly the largest accidental release of radioactive contaminants to the oceans in history,” Buesseler said in a statement. ...

http://www.theguardian.com/environm...disaster-radiation-detected-off-canadas-coast
 
Hmmm

CCE4i61W0AE_IVg.png
 
It's just asking for trouble, isn't it? I saw that documentary, what was it called? Oh yes, "Eight-Legged Freaks", very worrying...
 
Mind you, Spider-Man is the other possible outcome...
 
I keep thinking of the wrong kind of plant...
It's all Little Shop of Horrors
 
Mutant Flowers From Japan's Fukushima Nuclear Disaster Go Viral Online
Four years after the disaster at Japan's Fukushima nuclear power plant, strange things still are happening to the plants and animals living there.

Recent years have brought reports of deformed fruit and mutant butterflies, but the latest is a remarkable photo of deformed daisies posted on Twitter by @san_kaido, who took the photo below in Nasushiobara City, which lies about 70 miles from Fukushima.
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CGAcNp4UoAITw69.jpg


http://www.weather.com/science/nature/news/mutant-flowers-japan-fukushima-famous
 
But we can't see how big they are, they could be huge, as with the dandelions in the Akira Kurosawa film Dreams, which also depicts a Japanese nuclear power plant disaster.
 
It looks like a condition called cellular proliferation, ive seen it on dandelions, strawberries and asters in my garden and there's no radiation round these 'ere parts.
 
Japan is inviting residents to return to a town evacuated in 2011 after the Fukushima nuclear plant disaster.

Naraha is the first town to allow people to return permanently, following several years of decontamination work.

But many say they are not ready to come back, and only a fraction have returned for brief stays since a trial period began in April.

The Fukushima Daiichi plant suffered a series of meltdowns following a massive earthquake and tsunami.

After the disaster, all of Naraha's 7,400 residents moved out.

The town, about 20km (12 miles) south of the nuclear plant, is seen as a test case for the return of evacuated residents.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-34163297
 
Never-Before-Seen Images Reveal How The Fukushima Exclusion Zone Was Swallowed By Nature
Polish photographer Arkadiusz Podniesinski travelled to the site of the Fukushima nuclear disaster last month to see the location with his own eyes. When he obtained permits to enter the roughly 20km (12.5 mile) Exclusion Zone, he was confronted with a scene similar to one from a post apocalyptic film. Podniesinski previously photographed the area around the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster.
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http://www.boredpanda.com/photos-fukushima-exclusion-zone-podniesinski/
 
Fukushima nuclear power plant is still experiencing major contamination issues nearly five years after the earthquake, tsunami, and subsequent meltdown.
A new declassified report from the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, written on March 18, 2011 just days after the disaster, sheds light on just how bad it was.

We now know that "100% of the total spent fuel was released to the atmosphere from unit 4."

According to nuclear expert and whistleblower Arnie Gundersen in an interview with WBAI in New York, unit four contained more cesium "than in all 800 nuclear bombs exploded above ground".

Cesium has been linked to thyroid cancer, which is on the increase in the Fukushima area since the tsunami, according to the US National Library of Medicine.

The chemical is highly soluble in water and can find its way into foodstuffs that have been prepared in contaminated areas.

https://www.rt.com/news/325663-fukushima-nuclear-report-declassified/
 
Mythopoeika said:
'Soluble'? It explodes!
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Formates of it, eg caesium hydroxide mixed with formic, are safe to use in water & will eventually dissolve.

The largest current end-use of nonradioactive caesium is in caesium formate-based drilling fluids for the extractive oil industry.[10] Aqueous solutions of caesium formate (HCOO−Cs+)—made by reacting caesium hydroxide with formic acid—were developed in the mid-1990s for use as oil well drilling and completion fluids. The function of a drilling fluid is to lubricate drill bits, to bring rock cuttings to the surface, and to maintain pressure on the formation during drilling of the well. Completion fluids assist the emplacement of control hardware after drilling but prior to production by maintaining the pressure ...

Isotope 137 is soluble in water, is used in nuclear applications as well as being a by-product of nuclear fission and probably makes up the vast majority of the caesium mentioned in the article.

Radioactive isotopes of caesium in radiation devices were used in the medical field to treat certain types of cancer,[89] but emergence of better alternatives and the use of water-soluble caesium chloride in the sources, which could create wide-ranging contamination, gradually put some of these caesium sources out of use. ...

It is a daughter product of nuclear fission reactions. With the commencement of nuclear testing around 1945, and continuing through the mid-1980s, caesium-137 was released into the atmosphere, where it is absorbed readily into solution. Known year-to-year variation within that period allows correlation with soil and sediment layers. ...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caesium
 
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