Published on Aug 27, 2013
A LOT of news about Fukushima I've collected for the last 4 days. No real editing, just the reports.BONUS LINK FOR TODAY: Fukushima ... What YOU Need To Know
http://tinyurl.com/ppeynrl
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Latest Headlines: http://enenews.com/
Study: "Fuel materials" entering Pacific Ocean via drains of Fukushima Daiichi resulted in potentially serious contamination of marine environment
Japan Professor compares cesium-137 releases from radiation disasters: Fukushima at up to 77 quadrillion Bq (77 PBq); Chernobyl at 85 quadrillion Bq (85 PBq) — Fukushima releases ongoing
'The Coming Fallout': Experts now fear massive reservoir of Fukushima contamination about to reach Pacific Ocean — "Slow, seeping buildup of a second catastrophe" — Workers can't say when or how they can stop flow
Vermont Yankee closing permanently — Embattled nuclear plant will be decommissioned in 2014 when current fuel cycle ends — Had license to operate until 2032
Nuclear experts concerned about water flow "reversing" due to Fukushima underground ice plan — Even more highly radioactive liquid inside reactor buildings to enter aquifer?
Warning that foundations of Fukushima reactor chambers have been "compromised" — Groundwater rising fast, now just 10 inches from surface
Nuclear Official: Tepco made Fukushima plant into a "machine for generating radioactive water" — Runoff from molten atomic cores now in groundwater, ocean — 'Air cooling' should be used
Japan Times: Extreme contamination in Fukushima reactor buildings 'most likely' mixing into aquifer, reveals Tepco — Bloomberg: Could this flow downstream to Tokyo and present a big risk? (VIDEO)
Water with nuclear fuel coming up from ocean floor off Fukushima coast? Tokyo Professor: 156 quadrillion Bq of Cs-137 once in basements — Double Chernobyl; Getting close to total fallout from every atomic bomb test in history — May be outputting from seeps in seafloor, I don't know (VIDEO)
Nuclear Engineer: Estimated 276 quadrillion Bq of Cs-137 entered Fukushima basements — Triple Chernobyl total release — A portion "has already made its way to aquifer, whence it can easily flow into sea"
Experts: Fukushima leaks "much worse" than authorities will admit — Disturbing questions confront Japan as leader visits Middle East to push nuclear
TV: "The Japanese are part of a massive non-consensual experiment on radiation exposure" — "Everywhere now is radioactive, we can't escape it," say Fukushima locals at beach (VIDEO)
Local Gov't Official in Fukushima: "One day the world will sue Japan for this" (VIDEO)
Alaska Newspaper: Concern Fukushima nuclear waste is tainting our salmon — Worried about impact on humans — Scientists urged to conduct tests
NHK: Sinking ground at Fukushima plant may have deformed tank, leading to leak of extremely contaminated water (VIDEO)
Contamination now spiking in seawater off Fukushima plant — Asahi reports up to 18-fold increase in a week
Highly Regarded Physician: The salmon migrate through radioactive plumes coming off Fukushima, then we catch them on Canada's shores — Concerned about lack of testing — Officials "rely on Japan for test results" (VIDEO)
Nuclear Experts: Portion of Fukushima's molten fuel believed to have "moved into earth" — Melted cores contacting groundwater may be cause of recent spike in radiation levels -CTV
TV: We're talking about generations being affected by Fukushima, and also their future healthcare... How are those in charge getting away with this, time after time by just saying sorry? — What do we tell the younger generation about what happened to our ocean? (VIDEOS)
"Ultimate, worst-case scenario" underway at Fukushima? New York Times: Experts suspect intense contamination is seeping out from under melted-down reactors and into Pacific — Will surpass even the leaks from disaster's early days
Lawmaker: Declare 'State of Emergency' right away and intervene at Fukushima — Japan Professor: Issue S.O.S. now, it's really an emergency... Gov't is utterly lost, international help is needed
Gundersen: Ocean already contaminated from deluge of Fukushima toxic water — Will stop eating fish from west coast — Cesium at 1,000% normal levels in middle of Pacific
********************************************************
Bloomberg.com News
Tepco Faces 132 Olympic Pools Worth of Radioactive Water
By Yuriy Humber & Jacob Adelman -
Aug 27, 2013 9:03 PM CT
Tepco `Textbook' Management Failure at Fukushima
A worker checks radiation levels
near the No. 10 storage tank in the H3 tank area at the Fukushima
Dai-Ichi nuclear power plant in Fukushima, Japan, in this handout
photograph taken on Aug. 21, 2013. Source: Tokyo Electric Power Co. via
Bloomberg
Moored fishing boats sit at
Hisanohama fishing port in Iwaki, Fukushima Prefecture, Japan. Tokyo
Electric Power Co. will need approval from the government, local
residents and fishermen before it can act on how to dispose of the
radioactive water. Photographer: Yuriko Nakao/Bloomberg
Processing and disposing of the water, enough to fill 132 Olympic-size swimming pools, will be one of the most challenging engineering tasks of our generation, former nuclear engineer Michael Friedlander said. Tokyo Electric has chopped down forest to add more water tanks at the site 220 kilometers (137 miles) northeast of Tokyo.
The steel storage tanks are vulnerable to spills due to earthquakes as well as leaks, representing “a very clear and present danger to the plant site and to the people working there,” said Friedlander, who spent 13 years operating U.S. nuclear plants, including the Crystal River Station in Florida.
“There are really only a few ways you can get rid of it,” Friedlander said. “You put it in the ocean or it’s going to have to be evaporated. It’s a political hotspot, but at some point you cannot just continue collecting this water.”
Deciding on a disposal method is increasingly urgent after a series of leaks, including one last week labeled by Japan’s safety regulator as the most “severe incident” since the site was disabled by the 2011 earthquake and tsunami.
Disposal Method
Tepco has 300 tons of water flowing into the reactors each day for cooling, while another 400 tons of groundwater from hills behind the plant is seeping into basements and mixing with contaminated run-off. Tepco is then pumping hundreds of tons out of the basements each day to store in tanks to await treatment to extract cesium and strontium via two filter systems. After sufficient processing, the water gets classified as low-level contaminant for disposal.Tepco said this week that the second of the two filter systems failed this month and it won’t be fixed until next month. A leak of at least 300 tons from one of the 1,000-ton storage tanks last week prompted the Nuclear Regulation Authority to warn that more may be prone to similar spills. The watchdog also criticized Tepco for management of the tanks.
“This is becoming rapidly an international issue, so I think there is some pressure from countries in the region, including China Korea and others,” said Tom O’Sullivan, founder of Tokyo-based energy consultant Mathyos.
‘Took Too Long’
Japan’s nuclear industry used the tank storage method even before the Fukushima accident and it has been shown to be ineffective from a safety standpoint, Joonhong Ahn, a professor in the nuclear engineering department at the University of California, Berkeley, said.“The process toward solution is not simple,” yet someone in charge must make the decision to release water with a low level of contamination, Ahn said. “The remedies taken by Tepco have been very incomplete and took too long.”
Tepco has yet to decide how to dispose of the contaminated water, spokeswoman Mayumi Yoshida said. Tepco will need approval from the government, local residents and fishermen before it can act. The company said last week it would seek help from abroad to manage the water issue.
Read More and Watch Video Here
********************************************************
Fukushima inspectors 'careless', Japan agency says, as nuclear crisis grows
Related Video
Related Interactive
HIRONO, Japan |
(Reuters) - The operator of Japan's
wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant was careless in monitoring tanks storing
dangerously radioactive water, the nuclear regulator said on Friday,
the latest development in a crisis no one seems to know how to contain.Tokyo Electric Power Co. also failed to keep records of inspections of the tanks, Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) Commissioner Toyoshi Fuketa told reporters after a visit to the nearby Fukushima Daiichi plant.
Fuketa visited the plant on Friday after NRA chairman Shunichi Tanaka said this week he was concerned more of the hastily built giant containers would fail.
Read More Here
********************************************************
The Telegraph
Japanese government to take over Fukushima nuclear reactor
The Japanese government has finally lost patience with the bungling efforts of Tokyo Electric Power Company to get the crippled reactors at the Fukushima nuclear plant under control.
The crippled Tepco Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant's unit 3 reactor building Photo: AFP/Getty Images
Toshimitsu Motegi, the minister of trade and industry visited the plant on
Monday to determine progress to date on decommissioning the three damaged
reactors at the plant.
Speaking after being shown around the site, Mr Motegi said, “The urgency of
the situation is very high. From here on, the government will take charge.”
One week ago, TECPO
admitted that hundreds of tons of highly radioactive water had leaked from a
steel tank at the plant and that as much as 300 tons of contaminated
water has been escaping into the sea every day since the plant was
devastated by a magnitude-9 earthquake and tsunami in March 2011.
The minister said poor maintenance by TEPCO was to blame for the ongoing
problems at the site.
As well as leaks of water contaminated with radiation, work to bring the
damaged reactors under control has been making painfully slow progress.
Radiation levels in three of the reactor buildings are so high that it is
impossible for workers to spend more than a couple of minutes inside at one
time.
Read More Here
Read More Here
********************************************************
Related articles
