http://rt.com/op-edge/fukushima-catastrophe-nuclear-olympics-883/
Published time: September 15, 2013 11:06
Dr Helen Caldicott is one of the most articulate and passionate advocates of citizen action to remedy the nuclear and environmental crises.
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Published time: September 15, 2013 11:06
As the escape of radiation at Fukushima seems virtually unstoppable, there are still steps that governments all over the world should take to prevent worst case consequences. One of them would be canceling the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo.
Scientific estimates predict that the radioactive plume travelling east across the Pacific will likely hit the shores of Oregon, Washington State and Canada early next year. California will probably be impacted later that year. Because the ongoing flow of water from the reactor site will be virtually impossible to stop, a radioactive plume will continue to migrate across the Pacific affecting Hawaii, North America, South America and eventually Australia for many decades.
We are only talking about ocean currents, however, fish swim thousands of miles and don’t necessarily follow the currents. As noted in Part I, big fish concentrate radiation most efficiently, and tuna have already been caught off the coast of California containing cesium from Fukushima. Seaweed also efficiently concentrates radioactive elements.
As I contemplate the future at Fukushima, it seems that the escape of radiation is virtually unstoppable. The levels of radiation in buildings 1, 2 and 3 are now so high that no human can enter or get close to the molten cores. It will therefore be impossible to remove these cores for hundreds of years if ever.
Buildings 1, 2 & 3
If one of these buildings collapses, the targeted flow of cooling water to the pools and cores would cease, the cores would become red hot and possibly ignite releasing massive amounts of radiation into the air and water and the fuel in the cooling pools could ignite. It is strange that neither the US government in particular nor the global community seem to be concerned about these imminent possibilities and exhibit no urge to avert catastrophe.Similarly the global media is strangely disconnected with the ongoing crisis. Most importantly, the Japanese government until very recently has obstinately refused to invite and collaborate with foreign experts from nuclear engineering companies and/or governments.
Building 4
This structure was severely damaged during the initial quake, its walls are bulging, and it sank 31 inches (79cm) into the ground. On the roof sits a cooling pool containing about 250 tons of hot fuel rods, most of which had just been removed from the reactor core days before the earthquake struck. This particular core did not melt because TEPCO was able maintain a continuous flow of cooling water, so the rods and their holding racks are still intact, but geometrically deformed due to the force of the hydrogen explosion.The cooling pool contains 8,800 pounds of plutonium plus over 100 other highly radioactive isotopes. Instead of this core melting into a larval mass like the other three cores, it sits exposed to the air atop the shaky building. A large earthquake could disrupt the integrity of the building, causing it to collapse and taking the hot fuel rods with it. The cooling water would evaporate and the intrinsic heat of the radioactive rods would ignite a fire as the zirconium cladding reacted with air, releasing the radioactive equivalent of 14,000 Hiroshima-sized bombs and 10 times more cesium than Chernobyl.
Not only would the Northern Hemisphere become badly contaminated, but the Japanese government is seriously contemplating evacuating 35 million people from Tokyo should this happen. TEPCO has constructed a steel frame to strengthen the shaky building in order to place a massive crane on the roof so they can extract the hot rods by remote control. This operation is always performed by computer and a remote manually-controlled extraction has never been attempted before. If the rods are deformed, a rod could fracture releasing so much radiation that the workers would have to evacuate or, should they touch each other, a chain reaction could release huge amounts of radiation.
I defer to Arnie Gundersen, a nuclear engineer in whom I have great faith. He says that a 2-meter thick zeolite wall should be constructed some distance from the reactors on the mountainside, which would effectively absorb the cesium from the water surrounding the reactor cores so it could not get out and further pollute the pure water descending from the mountain. At the same time, channels must be constructed to pump and divert the unpolluted mountain water into the sea. Then the three molten cores and their associated buildings could be immersed in concrete as the Soviets did at Chernobyl, and the situation could possibly be neutralized for about 100 years. What our poor descendants will then decide to do with this radioactive rubbish dump is beyond my comprehension.
However, as one Japanese official said, “If we just buried them no one would look at another nuclear plant for years.” An interesting reaction, so it is perfectly obvious that despite the calamity, they still want to pursue the nuclear option.
North America and Canada the EPA should immediately start monitoring the fish routinely caught off the west coast and it must also, as a matter of urgency, establish many effective airborne monitors up and down the west coast and across the US continent, so that if there is another large release of radiation it will be effectively measured and the information rapidly passed on to the public. The same holds true for Canada.
The US and Canadian governments must forthwith ban imported food from Japan, unless each batch is monitored for contamination, and the food grown in the US and Canada needs to be effectively monitored pending another major accident. The US has allowed food measuring up to 1,200 Becquerels per kilo to be sold in the US from Japan, while the Japanese allowable concentration for food is only 100 Becquerels per kilo. What does the US government think it is doing purposely exposing people to radioactive food? This situation must be urgently amended.
Nuclear Olympics
Given these impending problems, how can Japanese Prime Minister Abe possibly say that Tokyo will be safe for the Olympics? He actually said that “there is absolutely no problem” and “the situation is under control.” Does he not understand that parts of Tokyo are already radioactively contaminated and that his government is dumping ashes from the incineration of thousands of tons of radioactive debris from the tsunami and earthquake into Tokyo Bay? Is this what the athletes will be swimming in?What if there is another major release of radiation before the Olympics? Young fit people who have spent years in rigorous training must, under no circumstances be exposed to radioactive air, food or water. And how can Abe possibly consider spending all that money housing people in expensive accommodation and constructing stadiums etc. when his own people - 160,000 Fukushima refugees - live in shacks and millions still live in highly radioactive zones and when the Fukushima complex is out of control?
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.
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Dr Helen Caldicott on the authorities’ concealment of medical effects of Fukushima catastrophe
UN, Japan, Concealing Extent of Fukushima Catastrophe MWC News, By Sherwood Ross Friday, 01 August 2014 Japanese and United Nations authorities have placed “a cone of silence” over medical information an endangered Japanese public is entitled to have about the Fukushima nuclear plant meltdown.
“Many doctors have been ordered not to inform their patients that their symptoms could be related to radiation, leaving them in a state of despair,” Dr.Caldicott says. (They) “need to know the truth about their situation and that of their children.”
Dr. Caldicott, who has received 21 honorary doctorates for her work, says that to make matters worse, Japan Prime Minister Shinzo Abe “has passed a secrecy law which will almost certainly intimidate the media from keeping a very close watch over the tenuous (nuclear) plant.”
The government, she says, and Tokyo Electric Power Co.(TEPCO), “have been reluctant to divulge reliable data and information about radioactive releases, the ongoing state of the severely damaged reactors, the continuous outflow of radioactive water into the sea, and the possibility of a serious accident and radiation release in the event of another earthquake greater than 7 on the Richter scale which could well trigger the collapse of the seriously damaged buildings numbers 3 and 4.”
Damaged Building 3 contains over 100 tons of molten radioactive fuel which “would almost certainly release massive quantities of radioactive elements…threatening millions of people with radioactive contamination,” Dr. Caldicott points out.
She goes on to say that if precariously damaged Building 4 should collapse, 400 tons of extremely radioactive fuel will plunge 100 feet to the ground, releasing its cooling water with possible ignition of the fuel. This could release ten times more cesium than was released at Chernobyl or the equivalent of 14,000 Hiroshima-sized bombs.
Since the meltdowns three years ago, 400 tons of polluted radioactive water have been flowing continuously into the Pacific Ocean every day, Dr. Caldicott says.Dr. Caldicott reminds that the IAEA Published reports after the April 26, 1986, meltdown of the nuclear plant in Chernobyl, Soviet Russia, that “there were no health effects due to radiation exposure.” This was an astonishing piece of misinformation as, according to one reliable report, by the year 2009, some 1 million Europeans had died. In Belarus alone, the percentage of healthy children dropped from 80% before the catastrophe to 20% afterwards.
What’s more, of the 800,000 healthy youngsters called “liquidators” brought in by the Government from around Russia to fight the burning reactor, within 19 years more than 120,000 were dead.
Dr. Caldicott urged the public to “demand that TEPCO and the Japanese government continually inform the public about the events that are and will be occurring at the Fukushima reactors, without cover-ups and denials of the facts.”
Should another major release of radiation occur, she said, the public must be informed immediately and evacuation begun immediately. http://mwcnews.net/focus/politics/44145-fukushima-catastrophe.html#sthash.5cgmPLZn.dpuf
What’s more, of the 800,000 healthy youngsters called “liquidators” brought in by the Government from around Russia to fight the burning reactor, within 19 years more than 120,000 were dead.
Dr. Caldicott urged the public to “demand that TEPCO and the Japanese government continually inform the public about the events that are and will be occurring at the Fukushima reactors, without cover-ups and denials of the facts.”
Should another major release of radiation occur, she said, the public must be informed immediately and evacuation begun immediately. http://mwcnews.net/focus/politics/44145-fukushima-catastrophe.html#sthash.5cgmPLZn.dpuf
August 2, 2014 - Posted by Christina MacPherson | Fukushima 2014, health, Japan, secrets,lies and civil liberties
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UN, Japan, Concealing Extent of Fukushima Catastrophe - See more at: http://mwcnews.net/focus/politics/44145-fukushima-catastrophe.html#sthash.5cgmPLZn.QZwHZtTs.dpuf
Friday, 01 August 2014 11:08
By Sherwood Ross 
Japanese and United Nations authorities have placed "a cone of silence" over medical information an endangered Japanese public is entitled to have about the Fukushima nuclear plant meltdown. "It is obvious that there is collaboration between the World Health Organization(WHO) and the International Atomic Energy Agency(IAEA) and also the Japanese government…to hide, to lie, and to cover-up vital medical information that must be made available to the Japanese population," says
Dr. Helen Caldicott, the medical doctor who has been showered with honors and awards for her long-time opposition to the dangers of nuclear power manufacture and nuclear war. "Many doctors have been ordered not to inform their patients that their symptoms could be related to radiation, leaving them in a state of despair," Dr.Caldicott says. (They) "need to know the truth about their situation and that of their children." Dr. Caldicott, who has received 21 honorary doctorates for her work, says that to make matters worse, Japan Prime Minister Shinzo Abe "has passed a secrecy law which will almost certainly intimidate the media from keeping a very close watch over the tenuous (nuclear) plant." The government, she says, and Tokyo Electric Power Co.(TEPCO), "have been reluctant to divulge reliable data and information about radioactive releases, the ongoing state of the severely damaged reactors, the continuous outflow of radioactive water into the sea, and the possibility of a serious accident and radiation release in the event of another earthquake greater than 7 on the Richter scale which could well trigger the collapse of the seriously damaged buildings numbers 3 and 4." Damaged Building 3 contains over 100 tons of molten radioactive fuel which "would almost certainly release massive quantities of radioactive elements…threatening millions of people with radioactive contamination," Dr. Caldicott points out. She goes on to say that if precariously damaged Building 4 should collapse, 400 tons of extremely radioactive fuel will plunge 100 feet to the ground, releasing its cooling water with possible ignition of the fuel. This could release ten times more cesium than was released at Chernobyl or the equivalent of 14,000 Hiroshima-sized bombs. Since the meltdowns three years ago, 400 tons of polluted radioactive water have been flowing continuously into the Pacific Ocean every day, Dr. Caldicott says. Dr. Caldicott reminds that the IAEA Published reports after the April 26, 1986, meltdown of the nuclear plant in Chernobyl, Soviet Russia, that "there were no health effects due to radiation exposure." This was an astonishing piece of misinformation as, according to one reliable report, by the year 2009, some 1 million Europeans had died. In Belarus alone, the percentage of healthy children dropped from 80% before the catastrophe to 20% afterwards. What's more, of the 800,000 healthy youngsters called "liquidators" brought in by the Government from around Russia to fight the burning reactor, within 19 years more than 120,000 were dead. Dr. Caldicott urged the public to "demand that TEPCO and the Japanese government continually inform the public about the events that are and will be occurring at the Fukushima reactors, without cover-ups and denials of the facts." Should another major release of radiation occur, she said, the public must be informed immediately and evacuation begun immediately.
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Fukushima Exponentially More Dire than Chernobyl — Deteriorating Plant Threatens Global Radiation? By Guy Crittenden Global Research, December 18, 2014 ENEnews 12 December 2014
- “…………Instead of a long article about what transpired in 2014 and what may be ahead, I’m going to offer readers three items… that have made a deep impression on me recently; these are “must watch” items for anyone interested in helping our species avoid peril from environmental degradation
- The deteriorating status of things at the destroyed nuclear plant at Fukushima, Japan…you have an obligation, really, to be aware of conditions there
- [There is a] very real and present threat from the… highly radioactive… destroyed cores of the reactors, as well as things like the storage of contaminated water in hastily-built, rusting containers
- This is serious stuff… an actual meltdown of the reactors — real China Syndrome stuff — as had been assumed would never likely happen in a modern reactor
- The situation is exponentially more dire than Chernobyl
- [Workers must] remove the rods for safe containment without having them contact one another and trigger a fire, the consequences of which would be unimaginable — We’re talking mass extinction around the world, especially in the northern hemisphere
- Most people have forgotten the situation and think of it only as a local Japanese problem
- It’s only a matter of time before another earthquake or tidal wave triggers such an event
Kevin Kamps, nuclear waste watchdog for Beyond Nuclear, Nuclear Hotseat, Dec 9, 2014 (at 37:00 in): “If the meltdown is bad enough, that’s going to burn its way right through the foundations of the containment — like we’ve seen at Fukushima Daiichi.” http://www.globalresearch.ca/fukushima-exponentially-more-dire-than-chernobyl-deteriorating-plant-threatens-mass-extinction-around-world/5420579
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Things must be really bad at Fukishima – Abe asks foreigners to help
http://agonist.org/things-must-be-really-bad-at-fukishima-abe-asks-foreigners-to-help/
By Michael Collins, on October 6th, 2013
We can look forward to new revelations about public dangers from the Fukushima mess in the very near future. Japanese Prime Minister Abe just formally requested help from other countries for the problems at Fukushima.
The International Atomic Energy Commission and United States Atomic Energy Commission had dispatched experts to Japan before Abe’s public announcement. Senator Ron Weyden (D-OR) asked for international help in April, as did others, to no avail.
AP, Updated: Sunday, October 6, 1:08 AM
Why would Abe do this now? He’s been telling the world things were just fine. Here’s a hint. Tepco is under public attack by Japanese regulators for botching the cleanup job. The words below are very harsh.
This is classic bureaucratic self-protection (also known as CYA-cover your ass). Things are much worse than any but the best informed insiders know. They are probably verging on dangerous to Japan, Korea, and China. In order to cover themselves, the PM is looking like a cooperative chief executive favoring an international scientific effort. The regulators are scolding Tepco in advance in order to assure that blame is properly fixed when the news of increased levels of public threat emerge.
It’s all a show. The need to secure Fukushima against another earthquake, limit the damage caused to the environment, and avoid any doomsday scenarios was apparent from the start of the crisis in 2011. The world needs the truth on the dangers of Fukushima and requirements to fix the disaster. Then, action is required in a hurry.
Here is some up-to-the-minute reporting from Japan on Tepco’s solution to contaminated cooling water being released into the Pacific.
It is a miracle or, perhaps, cruel joke that with this level of stupidity, we are still around to finally do ourselves in.
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Have no fear for atomic energy? I do.
http://the40yearplan.com/2013/09/have-no-fear-for-atomic-energy-i-do/
Posted by: 40yearplan
September 25, 2013
I wish I could write another column about wishes like I did last week. Instead, I find myself straying from positive local visions, even after such a thrilling bicycle and Envisionfest weekend in Hartford.
Instead, I find myself reading up on Helen Caldicott, the medical doctor turned nuclear energy expert. Dr. Caldicott is begging the people of this planet to reach an international consensus on dealing with the radioactive waste at Fukushima Daiichi. And fast. But it seems no one is listening.
The global mass media has basically blacked out the possible consequences of Tokyo Electric Power Company’s (TEPCO) plans for Fukushima. They’re bad for the nuclear industry.
When you stop to consider what happened in Japan, knowing we have the several similar possible reactor problems around 60 miles as the crow flies from here, it makes it tough to think about anything but closing nuclear plants.
Capitalism must soldier on, though. The biggest issue at Fukushima is not the radioactive plume of water traveling across the Pacific Ocean east to California and the fish that swim in it.
I don’t think Helen Caldicott is crazy. She and Arnie Gunderson and a few others are the only ones talking up the problems and reasonable solutions to Fukushima in the United States.
The Republicans seem hell bent on destroying access to health care, or, in a larger framework, the notion of paying for civil society. The Democrats dilly-dally over chemical weapons in Syria at Israel’s beckoning. Fukushima never gets a mention.
The U.N. hasn’t heard much talk of Fukushima. In June of this year, the UN Scientific Community on the Effect of Atomic Radiation concluded that Fukushima’s radioactivity is unlikely to push up cancer rates in Japan.
A nuclear Iran is front and center at this year’s annual U.N. gathering of nations, but not even the Germans are talking Fukushima. The Germans took a global leadership position in 2011 when the Fukushima disaster prompted chancellor Angela Merkel to promise to close German nuclear facilities by 2022.
Merkel was just re-elected for a third term. Yet she seems more intent on increasing austerity than lending legendary German engineering to fix Fukushima at this critical stage.
Random writings on the internet call for a global solution, like a letter to the editor in the Japan Times seeking world aid. Yet the mantle for a sane solutions falls on Caldicott, Gunderson and others. It’s like with Ralph Nader. If society ignores the sounds of reformist voices, the problems will disappear. Wrong.
Caldicott lately is expressing concerns about the nuclear poisoning of the entire Northern Hemisphere. Where did I read about it? Not in the Hartford Courant or the New York Times. The Times last published an AP story on Fukushima on September 19, 2013, wherein Prime Minister Shinzo Abe ordered TEPCO to scrap all six reactors at Fukushima, instead of just four.
And did I note that the Times just reported a four cent dividend per share on its own stocks. Yet its’ own reporters haven’t written about Fukushima since September 5. It’s just not that big of a deal.
I found Caldicott’s op-ed in RT.com, the online vehicle for Russian Television (whose motto is “Question More.”). Dr. Caldicott, please explain about Fukushima Reactor 4:
“This structure was severely damaged during the initial quake, its walls are bulging, and it sank 31 inches (79cm) into the ground. On the roof sits a cooling pool containing about 250 tons of hot fuel rods, most of which had just been removed from the reactor core days before the earthquake struck.
“This particular core did not melt because TEPCO was able maintain a continuous flow of cooling water, so the rods and their holding racks are still intact, but geometrically deformed due to the force of the hydrogen explosion.
“The cooling pool contains 8,800 pounds of plutonium plus over 100 other highly radioactive isotopes. Instead of this core melting into a larval mass like the other three cores, it sits exposed to the air atop the shaky building.
“A large earthquake could disrupt the integrity of the building, causing it to collapse and taking the hot fuel rods with it. The cooling water would evaporate and the intrinsic heat of the radioactive rods would ignite a fire as the zirconium cladding reacted with air, releasing the radioactive equivalent of 14,000 Hiroshima-sized bombs and 10 times more cesium than Chernobyl.
“Not only would the Northern Hemisphere become badly contaminated, but the Japanese government is seriously contemplating evacuating 35 million people from Tokyo should this happen.”
Still think I’m paranoid? A 7.7 Richter scale quake just rocked Pakistan. That’s closer to Japan than Connecticut. Where did I read about this?
No one has been indicted for this awful failure of nuclear energy. Not anyone at TEPCO. Or General Electric, which designed the really bad Mark IV reactor, putting spent fuel directly above the reactor core, on a fault line. There are 23 sister reactors in the United States, including in Vermont, Massachusetts, New Jersey and New York.
Although it is important to note that Entergy, the owner Vermont Yankee, the GE Mark reactor outside of Brattleboro, has just declared it will close Vermont Yankee down. This is after Entergy won a lawsuit allowing Yankee to stay open. There’s more problems than the tritium leaking into the mighty Connecticut.
In Japan, TEPCO’s solution to the reactor core meltdowns is to remove the spent fuel in the pools above the melted reactors.
TEPCO has built a steel structure, using robots, because Reactor 4 is too radioactive for humans to approach. TEPCO will soon place a crane on top of the reactor to remove the hot fuel rods. Again, Dr. Caldicott:
“If the rods are deformed, a rod could fracture releasing so much radiation that the workers would have to evacuate or, should they touch each other, a chain reaction could release huge amounts of radiation.”
Caldicott thinks Connecticut’s own Arnie Gundersen has a 100-year-long, albeit temporary, solution to the problems at Fukushima.
Gunderson was a nuclear whistleblower from Warren who found radioactive materials in an accounting safe in a white-collar office building in Danbury in 1990. Arnie was harassed to the point where he considered suicide as a way out. He survived, and is now one of the world’s leading experts on nuclear energy safety.
Gunderson wants to build a 2-meter thick zeolite wall some distance from the reactors on the mountainside. Caldicott says these would “effectively absorb the cesium from the water surrounding the reactor cores so it could not get out and further pollute the pure water descending from the mountain.”
Simultaneously, Gunderson proposes to divert rivers from the mountains into the sea and then encase the three molten reactor cores at Fukushima in concrete, like the Soviets did at Chernyobl. Maybe in a century, we’ll have figured a way out of the mess.
But burial is beyond comprehension, because, as Caldicott reported from a Japanese official: “If we just buried them no one would look at another nuclear plant for years.”
Yeah, we can’t possibly rock the apple cart in the United States, where nuclear power is part of the consumerist portfolio. How would merchants at the Waterford Crystal Mall power their cash registers and light their showroom floors?
If only Godzilla were the monster humanity facing. Godzilla’s destruction has limited geographical range. Radioactivity could doom humanity. But who cares, onto the budget stalemate in Washington, D.C. Onto the Kardashians. Onto Bob Marley’s “Redemption Song”, the only solace I find in contemplating this nuclear economy:
“Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery, none but ourselves can free our minds. Have no fear for atomic energy, ’cause none of them can stop the time. How long shall they kill our prophets while we stand aside and look? Some say its just a part of it, we’ve got to fulfill the book.”
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14,000 Hiroshimas Still Hang in the Fukushima Air
http://my.firedoglake.com/solartopia/2013/10/11/14000-hiroshimas-still-hang-in-the-fukushima-air/
By: solartopia Friday October 11, 2013 12:51 am
Japan’s pro-nuclear Prime Minister has finally asked for global help at Fukushima.
It probably hasn’t hurt that more than 100,000 people have signed petitions calling for a global takeover; more than 8,000 have viewed a new YouTube on it.
Massive quantities of heavily contaminated water are pouring into the Pacific Ocean, dousing workers along the way. Hundreds of huge, flimsy tanks are leaking untold tons of highly radioactive fluids.
At Unit #4, more than 1300 fuel rods, with more than 400 tons of extremely radioactive material, containing potential cesium fallout comparable to 14,000 Hiroshima bombs, are stranded 100 feet in the air
All this more than 30 months after the 3/11/2011 earthquake/tsunami led to three melt-downs and at least four explosions.
“Our country needs your knowledge and expertise” he has said to the world community. “We are wide open to receive the most advanced knowledge from overseas to contain the problem.”
But is he serious?
“I am aware of three US companies with state of the art technology that have been to Japan repeatedly and have been rebuffed by the Japanese government,” says Arnie Gundersen, a Vermont-based nuclear engineer focused on Fukushima.
Fukushima Daiichi is less than 200 miles from Tokyo. Prevailing winds generally blow out to sea — directly towards the United States, where Fukushima’s fallout was measured less than a week after the initial disaster.
But radioactive hot spots have already been found in Tokyo. A worst-case cloud would eventually make Japan an uninhabitable waste-land. What it could do to the Pacific Ocean and the rest of us downwind approaches the unthinkable.
“If you calculate the amount of cesium 137 in the pool” at Unit #4, “the amount is equivalent to 14,000 Hiroshima atomic bombs,” says Hiroaki Koide, assistant professor at the Kyoto University Research Reactor Institute
The Unit #4 fuel assemblies were pulled for routine maintenance just prior to the earthquake/tsunami. An International Atomic Energy Agency document says they were exposed to the open air, did catch fire and did release radiation.
Since none of the six GE-designed Daiichi reactors has a containment over the fuel pools, that radiation poured directly into the atmosphere. Dozens more designed like these reactors operate in the US and around the world.
Then corrosive sea water was dumped into the pool.
Unit #4 was damaged in the quake, and by an explosion possibly caused by hydrogen leaking in from Unit #3. It shows signs of buckling and of sinking into soil turning to mud by water flowing down from the mountains, and from attempts to cool the cores missing from Units #1, #2 and #3.
Tokyo Electric Power and the Japanese government may try to bring down the Unit #4 rods next month. With cranes operated by computers, that might normally take about 100 days. But this requires manual control. Tepco says they’ll try to do it in a year (half their original estimate) presumably to beat the next earthquake.
But the pool may be damaged and corroded. Loose debris is visible. The rods and assemblies may be warped. Gundersen says they’re embrittled and may be crumbling.
Some 6,000 additional rods now sit in a common storage pool just 50 meters away. Overall some 11,000 rods are scattered around the site. Vital as it is, bringing Unit #4’s rods safely down is a just a small step toward coping with the overall mess.
Should just one rod fall or ignite, or buildings collapse, or cooling systems fail, radiation levels at the site could well force all humans to leave. Critical electronic equipment could be rendered unworkable. The world might then just stand helpless as the radioactive fires rage.
Gundersen long ago recommended Tepco dig a trench filled with zeolite to protect the site from the water flowing down from the mountains. He was told there was not enough money available to do the job.
Now Prime Minister Abe wants an “ice wall” to run a mile around the site. No such wall that size has ever been built, and this one could not be in place for at least two years.
Gundersen and 16 other experts have filed a list of suggestions with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon. Thus far there’s been no official response.
Abe’s request for global help with Fukushima’s water problems may be a welcome start.
But the fuel rods at Unit #4 embody our Earth’s most serious immediate crisis.
The team in charge of bringing them down must embody all the best minds our species can muster, along with every ounce of resource we can bring to bear.
The whole world must be watching as this operation begins.
Harvey Wasserman edits www.nukefree.org , where the nukefree/moveon petition is linked. He is Senior Editor of www.freepress.org. His interviews on Fukushima are at the www.prn.fm Solartopia Green Power & Wellness Show, and at EON Films.
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Fukushima Still out of control May-2014
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Things must be really bad at Fukishima – Abe asks foreigners to help
http://agonist.org/things-must-be-really-bad-at-fukishima-abe-asks-foreigners-to-help/
By Michael Collins, on October 6th, 2013
We can look forward to new revelations about public dangers from the Fukushima mess in the very near future. Japanese Prime Minister Abe just formally requested help from other countries for the problems at Fukushima.
The International Atomic Energy Commission and United States Atomic Energy Commission had dispatched experts to Japan before Abe’s public announcement. Senator Ron Weyden (D-OR) asked for international help in April, as did others, to no avail.
AP, Updated: Sunday, October 6, 1:08 AM
“TOKYO — Prime Minister Shinzo Abe says Japan is open to receiving overseas help to contain widening radioactive water leaks at the crippled nuclear plant in Fukushima. Abe made the comments Sunday in a speech at an international science forum in Kyoto in western Japan.”
Why would Abe do this now? He’s been telling the world things were just fine. Here’s a hint. Tepco is under public attack by Japanese regulators for botching the cleanup job. The words below are very harsh.
In a public hearing, an official at the regulatory agency, Katsuhiko Ikeda, dressed down Tepco’s president, saying the problems raised serious questions about the company’s ability to operate its other nuclear plants, like the huge Kashiwazaki-Kariwa facility, which Tepco wants to restart.
“That these leaks occurred due to human error is very regrettable,” Mr. Ikeda told the president, Naomi Hirose. “The failure to make rudimentary checks reflects a clear deterioration in the ability to manage the site.” Pittsburgh Post=Gazette, Oct
It’s all a show. The need to secure Fukushima against another earthquake, limit the damage caused to the environment, and avoid any doomsday scenarios was apparent from the start of the crisis in 2011. The world needs the truth on the dangers of Fukushima and requirements to fix the disaster. Then, action is required in a hurry.
Here is some up-to-the-minute reporting from Japan on Tepco’s solution to contaminated cooling water being released into the Pacific.
Following up this article.. [New leakage] 200,000,000 Bq/m3 was leaking for 12 hours max / Patrol didn’t notice “because it was raining” [URL]
The release of Nuclear Regulation Authority on 10/3/2013 revealed Tepco has no technology for countermeasures of the contaminated water leakage.
The photo [ above left and the link] show their “prevention” of the contaminated water spread by using the “vinyl sheet” and the “sandbag”. The leaked tank is just beside the drain and Tepco was trying to stop it flowing to the Pacific supposedly.
Next week two more Typhoons are coming close to Japan. (cf, [Contaminated water crisis] 2 more typhoons coming close to Japan [URL]) Fukushima Diary, Oct 3
It is a miracle or, perhaps, cruel joke that with this level of stupidity, we are still around to finally do ourselves in.
END
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Have no fear for atomic energy? I do.
http://the40yearplan.com/2013/09/have-no-fear-for-atomic-energy-i-do/
Posted by: 40yearplan
September 25, 2013
I wish I could write another column about wishes like I did last week. Instead, I find myself straying from positive local visions, even after such a thrilling bicycle and Envisionfest weekend in Hartford.
Instead, I find myself reading up on Helen Caldicott, the medical doctor turned nuclear energy expert. Dr. Caldicott is begging the people of this planet to reach an international consensus on dealing with the radioactive waste at Fukushima Daiichi. And fast. But it seems no one is listening.
The global mass media has basically blacked out the possible consequences of Tokyo Electric Power Company’s (TEPCO) plans for Fukushima. They’re bad for the nuclear industry.
When you stop to consider what happened in Japan, knowing we have the several similar possible reactor problems around 60 miles as the crow flies from here, it makes it tough to think about anything but closing nuclear plants.
Capitalism must soldier on, though. The biggest issue at Fukushima is not the radioactive plume of water traveling across the Pacific Ocean east to California and the fish that swim in it.
I don’t think Helen Caldicott is crazy. She and Arnie Gunderson and a few others are the only ones talking up the problems and reasonable solutions to Fukushima in the United States.
The Republicans seem hell bent on destroying access to health care, or, in a larger framework, the notion of paying for civil society. The Democrats dilly-dally over chemical weapons in Syria at Israel’s beckoning. Fukushima never gets a mention.
The U.N. hasn’t heard much talk of Fukushima. In June of this year, the UN Scientific Community on the Effect of Atomic Radiation concluded that Fukushima’s radioactivity is unlikely to push up cancer rates in Japan.
A nuclear Iran is front and center at this year’s annual U.N. gathering of nations, but not even the Germans are talking Fukushima. The Germans took a global leadership position in 2011 when the Fukushima disaster prompted chancellor Angela Merkel to promise to close German nuclear facilities by 2022.
Merkel was just re-elected for a third term. Yet she seems more intent on increasing austerity than lending legendary German engineering to fix Fukushima at this critical stage.
Random writings on the internet call for a global solution, like a letter to the editor in the Japan Times seeking world aid. Yet the mantle for a sane solutions falls on Caldicott, Gunderson and others. It’s like with Ralph Nader. If society ignores the sounds of reformist voices, the problems will disappear. Wrong.
Caldicott lately is expressing concerns about the nuclear poisoning of the entire Northern Hemisphere. Where did I read about it? Not in the Hartford Courant or the New York Times. The Times last published an AP story on Fukushima on September 19, 2013, wherein Prime Minister Shinzo Abe ordered TEPCO to scrap all six reactors at Fukushima, instead of just four.
And did I note that the Times just reported a four cent dividend per share on its own stocks. Yet its’ own reporters haven’t written about Fukushima since September 5. It’s just not that big of a deal.
I found Caldicott’s op-ed in RT.com, the online vehicle for Russian Television (whose motto is “Question More.”). Dr. Caldicott, please explain about Fukushima Reactor 4:
“This structure was severely damaged during the initial quake, its walls are bulging, and it sank 31 inches (79cm) into the ground. On the roof sits a cooling pool containing about 250 tons of hot fuel rods, most of which had just been removed from the reactor core days before the earthquake struck.
“This particular core did not melt because TEPCO was able maintain a continuous flow of cooling water, so the rods and their holding racks are still intact, but geometrically deformed due to the force of the hydrogen explosion.
“The cooling pool contains 8,800 pounds of plutonium plus over 100 other highly radioactive isotopes. Instead of this core melting into a larval mass like the other three cores, it sits exposed to the air atop the shaky building.
“A large earthquake could disrupt the integrity of the building, causing it to collapse and taking the hot fuel rods with it. The cooling water would evaporate and the intrinsic heat of the radioactive rods would ignite a fire as the zirconium cladding reacted with air, releasing the radioactive equivalent of 14,000 Hiroshima-sized bombs and 10 times more cesium than Chernobyl.
“Not only would the Northern Hemisphere become badly contaminated, but the Japanese government is seriously contemplating evacuating 35 million people from Tokyo should this happen.”
Still think I’m paranoid? A 7.7 Richter scale quake just rocked Pakistan. That’s closer to Japan than Connecticut. Where did I read about this?
No one has been indicted for this awful failure of nuclear energy. Not anyone at TEPCO. Or General Electric, which designed the really bad Mark IV reactor, putting spent fuel directly above the reactor core, on a fault line. There are 23 sister reactors in the United States, including in Vermont, Massachusetts, New Jersey and New York.
Although it is important to note that Entergy, the owner Vermont Yankee, the GE Mark reactor outside of Brattleboro, has just declared it will close Vermont Yankee down. This is after Entergy won a lawsuit allowing Yankee to stay open. There’s more problems than the tritium leaking into the mighty Connecticut.
In Japan, TEPCO’s solution to the reactor core meltdowns is to remove the spent fuel in the pools above the melted reactors.
TEPCO has built a steel structure, using robots, because Reactor 4 is too radioactive for humans to approach. TEPCO will soon place a crane on top of the reactor to remove the hot fuel rods. Again, Dr. Caldicott:
“If the rods are deformed, a rod could fracture releasing so much radiation that the workers would have to evacuate or, should they touch each other, a chain reaction could release huge amounts of radiation.”
Caldicott thinks Connecticut’s own Arnie Gundersen has a 100-year-long, albeit temporary, solution to the problems at Fukushima.
Gunderson was a nuclear whistleblower from Warren who found radioactive materials in an accounting safe in a white-collar office building in Danbury in 1990. Arnie was harassed to the point where he considered suicide as a way out. He survived, and is now one of the world’s leading experts on nuclear energy safety.
Gunderson wants to build a 2-meter thick zeolite wall some distance from the reactors on the mountainside. Caldicott says these would “effectively absorb the cesium from the water surrounding the reactor cores so it could not get out and further pollute the pure water descending from the mountain.”
Simultaneously, Gunderson proposes to divert rivers from the mountains into the sea and then encase the three molten reactor cores at Fukushima in concrete, like the Soviets did at Chernyobl. Maybe in a century, we’ll have figured a way out of the mess.
But burial is beyond comprehension, because, as Caldicott reported from a Japanese official: “If we just buried them no one would look at another nuclear plant for years.”
Yeah, we can’t possibly rock the apple cart in the United States, where nuclear power is part of the consumerist portfolio. How would merchants at the Waterford Crystal Mall power their cash registers and light their showroom floors?
If only Godzilla were the monster humanity facing. Godzilla’s destruction has limited geographical range. Radioactivity could doom humanity. But who cares, onto the budget stalemate in Washington, D.C. Onto the Kardashians. Onto Bob Marley’s “Redemption Song”, the only solace I find in contemplating this nuclear economy:
“Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery, none but ourselves can free our minds. Have no fear for atomic energy, ’cause none of them can stop the time. How long shall they kill our prophets while we stand aside and look? Some say its just a part of it, we’ve got to fulfill the book.”
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14,000 Hiroshimas Still Hang in the Fukushima Air
http://my.firedoglake.com/solartopia/2013/10/11/14000-hiroshimas-still-hang-in-the-fukushima-air/
By: solartopia Friday October 11, 2013 12:51 am
Japan’s pro-nuclear Prime Minister has finally asked for global help at Fukushima.
It probably hasn’t hurt that more than 100,000 people have signed petitions calling for a global takeover; more than 8,000 have viewed a new YouTube on it.
2013/10/04 に公開
Journalist, author, activist and historian Harvey Wasserman has been reporting on, and participating in, the nuclear free movement for decades. In that time, by his judgment, only one other event matches the danger to the world posed by the Cuban Missile Crisis. That event is the ongoing nuclear disaster at Fukushima.
Haven't heard about it in the corporate media? That's because the deadly and dying global nuclear industry and its allies don't want you to know.
That's why he has organized a petition drive to the UN advocating international expert oversight of, and participation in, management of the Fukushima crisis.
In this interview, he explains why we must all be involved in this world-historical challenge to human and planetary survival. Sign the petition here: http://petitions.moveon.org/sign/the-...
Haven't heard about it in the corporate media? That's because the deadly and dying global nuclear industry and its allies don't want you to know.
That's why he has organized a petition drive to the UN advocating international expert oversight of, and participation in, management of the Fukushima crisis.
In this interview, he explains why we must all be involved in this world-historical challenge to human and planetary survival. Sign the petition here: http://petitions.moveon.org/sign/the-...
Massive quantities of heavily contaminated water are pouring into the Pacific Ocean, dousing workers along the way. Hundreds of huge, flimsy tanks are leaking untold tons of highly radioactive fluids.
At Unit #4, more than 1300 fuel rods, with more than 400 tons of extremely radioactive material, containing potential cesium fallout comparable to 14,000 Hiroshima bombs, are stranded 100 feet in the air
All this more than 30 months after the 3/11/2011 earthquake/tsunami led to three melt-downs and at least four explosions.
“Our country needs your knowledge and expertise” he has said to the world community. “We are wide open to receive the most advanced knowledge from overseas to contain the problem.”
But is he serious?
“I am aware of three US companies with state of the art technology that have been to Japan repeatedly and have been rebuffed by the Japanese government,” says Arnie Gundersen, a Vermont-based nuclear engineer focused on Fukushima.
Abe, he says (to paraphrase it politely), might not be entirely forthcoming.I have spoken with six Japanese medical doctors who have said that they were told not to discuss radiation induced medical issues with their patients. None will speak out to the press.
Three American University professors … were afraid to sign the UN petition to Ban Ki-Moon because it would endanger their Japanese colloquies who they are doing research with.
Fukushima Daiichi is less than 200 miles from Tokyo. Prevailing winds generally blow out to sea — directly towards the United States, where Fukushima’s fallout was measured less than a week after the initial disaster.
But radioactive hot spots have already been found in Tokyo. A worst-case cloud would eventually make Japan an uninhabitable waste-land. What it could do to the Pacific Ocean and the rest of us downwind approaches the unthinkable.
“If you calculate the amount of cesium 137 in the pool” at Unit #4, “the amount is equivalent to 14,000 Hiroshima atomic bombs,” says Hiroaki Koide, assistant professor at the Kyoto University Research Reactor Institute
The Unit #4 fuel assemblies were pulled for routine maintenance just prior to the earthquake/tsunami. An International Atomic Energy Agency document says they were exposed to the open air, did catch fire and did release radiation.
Since none of the six GE-designed Daiichi reactors has a containment over the fuel pools, that radiation poured directly into the atmosphere. Dozens more designed like these reactors operate in the US and around the world.
Then corrosive sea water was dumped into the pool.
Unit #4 was damaged in the quake, and by an explosion possibly caused by hydrogen leaking in from Unit #3. It shows signs of buckling and of sinking into soil turning to mud by water flowing down from the mountains, and from attempts to cool the cores missing from Units #1, #2 and #3.
Tokyo Electric Power and the Japanese government may try to bring down the Unit #4 rods next month. With cranes operated by computers, that might normally take about 100 days. But this requires manual control. Tepco says they’ll try to do it in a year (half their original estimate) presumably to beat the next earthquake.
But the pool may be damaged and corroded. Loose debris is visible. The rods and assemblies may be warped. Gundersen says they’re embrittled and may be crumbling.
Some 6,000 additional rods now sit in a common storage pool just 50 meters away. Overall some 11,000 rods are scattered around the site. Vital as it is, bringing Unit #4’s rods safely down is a just a small step toward coping with the overall mess.
Should just one rod fall or ignite, or buildings collapse, or cooling systems fail, radiation levels at the site could well force all humans to leave. Critical electronic equipment could be rendered unworkable. The world might then just stand helpless as the radioactive fires rage.
Gundersen long ago recommended Tepco dig a trench filled with zeolite to protect the site from the water flowing down from the mountains. He was told there was not enough money available to do the job.
Now Prime Minister Abe wants an “ice wall” to run a mile around the site. No such wall that size has ever been built, and this one could not be in place for at least two years.
Gundersen and 16 other experts have filed a list of suggestions with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon. Thus far there’s been no official response.
Abe’s request for global help with Fukushima’s water problems may be a welcome start.
But the fuel rods at Unit #4 embody our Earth’s most serious immediate crisis.
The team in charge of bringing them down must embody all the best minds our species can muster, along with every ounce of resource we can bring to bear.
The whole world must be watching as this operation begins.
Harvey Wasserman edits www.nukefree.org , where the nukefree/moveon petition is linked. He is Senior Editor of www.freepress.org. His interviews on Fukushima are at the www.prn.fm Solartopia Green Power & Wellness Show, and at EON Films.
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Fukushima Still out of control May-2014
2013/08/15 に公開
The World is at a critical crossroads. The Fukushima disaster in Japan has brought to the forefront the dangers of Worldwide nuclear radiation.
The crisis in Japan has been described as "a nuclear war without a war". In the words of renowned novelist Haruki Murakami:
"This time no one dropped a bomb on us ... We set the stage, we committed the crime with our own hands, we are destroying our own lands, and we are destroying our own lives."
Nuclear radiation --which threatens life on planet earth-- is not front page news in comparison to the most insignificant issues of public concern.
While the long-term repercussions of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster are yet to be fully assessed, they are far more serious than those pertaining to the 1986 Chernobyl disaster in the Ukraine, which resulted in almost one million deaths (New Book Concludes -- Chernobyl death toll: 985,000, mostly from cancer Global Research, September 10, 2010, See also Matthew Penney and Mark Selden The Severity of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Disaster: Comparing Chernobyl and Fukushima, Global Research, May 25, 2011)
The shaky political consensus both in Japan, the U.S. and Western Europe is that the crisis at Fukushima has been contained.
The realties, however, are otherwise.
An opinion poll in May 2011 confirmed that more than 80 per cent of the Japanese population do not believe the government's information regarding the nuclear crisis. (quoted in Sherwood Ross, Fukushima: Japan's Second Nuclear Disaster, Global Research, November 10, 2011)
The Impacts in Japan
The Japanese government has been obliged to acknowledge that "the severity rating of its nuclear crisis ... matches that of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster". In a bitter irony, however, this tacit admission by the Japanese authorities has proven to been part of the cover-up of a significantly larger catastrophe, resulting in a process of global nuclear radiation and contamination:
"While Chernobyl was an enormous unprecedented disaster, it only occurred at one reactor and rapidly melted down. Once cooled, it was able to be covered with a concrete sarcophagus that was constructed with 100,000 workers. There are a staggering 4400 tons of nuclear fuel rods at Fukushima, which greatly dwarfs the total size of radiation sources at Chernobyl." ( Extremely High Radiation Levels in Japan: University Researchers Challenge Official Data, Global Research, April 11, 2011)
Fukushima in the wake of the Tsunami, March 2011
Worldwide Contamination
The dumping of highly radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean constitutes a potential trigger to a process of global radioactive contamination. Radioactive elements have not only been detected in the food chain in Japan, radioactive rain water has been recorded in California:
"Hazardous radioactive elements being released in the sea and air around Fukushima accumulate at each step of various food chains (for example, into algae, crustaceans, small fish, bigger fish, then humans; or soil, grass, cow's meat and milk, then humans). Entering the body, these elements -- called internal emitters -- migrate to specific organs such as the thyroid, liver, bone, and brain, continuously irradiating small volumes of cells with high doses of alpha, beta and/or gamma radiation, and over many years often induce cancer". (Helen Caldicott, Fukushima: Nuclear Apologists Play Shoot the Messenger on Radiation, The Age, April 26, 2011)
While the spread of radiation to the West Coast of North America was casually acknowledged, the early press reports (AP and Reuters) "quoting diplomatic sources" stated that only "tiny amounts of radioactive particles have arrived in California but do not pose a threat to human health."
"According to the news agencies, the unnamed sources have access to data from a network of measuring stations run by the United Nations' Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization. ...Headquarterd in Austria.
... Greg Jaczko, chair of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission,(a Commission with no current funding) told White House reporters on Thursday (March 17) that his experts "don't see any concern from radiation levels that could be harmful here in the United States or any of the U.S. territories
The Commons Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee chairman Anne McIntosh described the scale of the contamination in the food chain as "breathtaking"
The crisis in Japan has been described as "a nuclear war without a war". In the words of renowned novelist Haruki Murakami:
"This time no one dropped a bomb on us ... We set the stage, we committed the crime with our own hands, we are destroying our own lands, and we are destroying our own lives."
Nuclear radiation --which threatens life on planet earth-- is not front page news in comparison to the most insignificant issues of public concern.
While the long-term repercussions of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster are yet to be fully assessed, they are far more serious than those pertaining to the 1986 Chernobyl disaster in the Ukraine, which resulted in almost one million deaths (New Book Concludes -- Chernobyl death toll: 985,000, mostly from cancer Global Research, September 10, 2010, See also Matthew Penney and Mark Selden The Severity of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Disaster: Comparing Chernobyl and Fukushima, Global Research, May 25, 2011)
The shaky political consensus both in Japan, the U.S. and Western Europe is that the crisis at Fukushima has been contained.
The realties, however, are otherwise.
An opinion poll in May 2011 confirmed that more than 80 per cent of the Japanese population do not believe the government's information regarding the nuclear crisis. (quoted in Sherwood Ross, Fukushima: Japan's Second Nuclear Disaster, Global Research, November 10, 2011)
The Impacts in Japan
The Japanese government has been obliged to acknowledge that "the severity rating of its nuclear crisis ... matches that of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster". In a bitter irony, however, this tacit admission by the Japanese authorities has proven to been part of the cover-up of a significantly larger catastrophe, resulting in a process of global nuclear radiation and contamination:
"While Chernobyl was an enormous unprecedented disaster, it only occurred at one reactor and rapidly melted down. Once cooled, it was able to be covered with a concrete sarcophagus that was constructed with 100,000 workers. There are a staggering 4400 tons of nuclear fuel rods at Fukushima, which greatly dwarfs the total size of radiation sources at Chernobyl." ( Extremely High Radiation Levels in Japan: University Researchers Challenge Official Data, Global Research, April 11, 2011)
Fukushima in the wake of the Tsunami, March 2011
Worldwide Contamination
The dumping of highly radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean constitutes a potential trigger to a process of global radioactive contamination. Radioactive elements have not only been detected in the food chain in Japan, radioactive rain water has been recorded in California:
"Hazardous radioactive elements being released in the sea and air around Fukushima accumulate at each step of various food chains (for example, into algae, crustaceans, small fish, bigger fish, then humans; or soil, grass, cow's meat and milk, then humans). Entering the body, these elements -- called internal emitters -- migrate to specific organs such as the thyroid, liver, bone, and brain, continuously irradiating small volumes of cells with high doses of alpha, beta and/or gamma radiation, and over many years often induce cancer". (Helen Caldicott, Fukushima: Nuclear Apologists Play Shoot the Messenger on Radiation, The Age, April 26, 2011)
While the spread of radiation to the West Coast of North America was casually acknowledged, the early press reports (AP and Reuters) "quoting diplomatic sources" stated that only "tiny amounts of radioactive particles have arrived in California but do not pose a threat to human health."
"According to the news agencies, the unnamed sources have access to data from a network of measuring stations run by the United Nations' Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization. ...Headquarterd in Austria.
... Greg Jaczko, chair of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission,(a Commission with no current funding) told White House reporters on Thursday (March 17) that his experts "don't see any concern from radiation levels that could be harmful here in the United States or any of the U.S. territories
The Commons Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee chairman Anne McIntosh described the scale of the contamination in the food chain as "breathtaking"
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