Tokyo Electric Power Company

For Tepco and Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, toxic water stymies cleanup.

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Two and a half years after a series of meltdowns, Japan’s effort to clean up what remains of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant is turning into another kind of disaster.

The site now stores 90 million gallons of radioactive water, more than enough to fill Yankee Stadium to the brim. An additional 400 tons of toxic water is flowing daily into the Pacific Ocean, and almost every week, the plant operator acknowledges a new leak.

An aerial view shows Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO)'s crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant and its contaminated water storage tanks. The operator of the nuclear plant said that four tonnes of rainwater that may be contaminated leaked during a transfer of radioactive water between tank holding areas.

That operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co., known as Tepco, was put in charge of the cleanup process more than two years ago and subsequently given a government bailout as its debts soared. The job of dismantling the facility was supposed to give Tepco an opportunity to rebuild credibility.

But many lawmakers and nuclear industry specialists say that Tepco is perpetuating the kinds of mistakes that led to the March 2011 meltdowns: underestimating the plant’s vulnerabilities, ignoring warnings from outsiders and neglecting to draw up plans for things that might go wrong. Those failures, they say, have led to the massive buildup and leaking of toxic water.

“Tepco didn’t play enough of these what-if games,” said Dale Klein, a former chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, who recently joined a Tepco advisory panel. “They didn’t have enough of that questioning attitude” about their plans.

The leaks into the ocean are far less toxic than the radioactive plumes that emanated from the plant after the earthquake and tsunami, forcing 160,000 people to move out of the vicinity. Thanks to that quick evacuation, experts say, there are no expectations of a Chernobyl-style spike in cancer cases — although the government is conducting thyroid checks of thousands of children. But the flow of contaminated water amounts to a slow-burning environmental disaster with implications for Japan’s wildlife and its food chain.

Tanks of radiation-contaminated water are seen at TEPCO’s nuclear power plant in Fukushima.

The problems have prompted the central government to step in with about $500 million to fund new countermeasures, including a subterranean “ice wall” designed to keep groundwater from flowing into irradiated buildings.

The latest government-led actions are particularly galling for some, who say Tepco should have taken similar measures earlier. One lawmaker, Sumio Mabuchi, who was also an adviser to then-Prime Minister Naoto Kan, says Tepco, deep in debt, neglected to take important steps against the groundwater two years ago because of concerns about its bottom line. Tepco’s president, Naomi Hirose, testified in parliament last month that the company hasn’t “scrimped” on the cleanup, though he did say that Tepco is “majorly at fault” for its failure to manage the groundwater buildup.

The 40-year decommissioning is expected to cost 10 trillion yen, or about $100 billion — roughly two years’ worth of Tepco’s revenue — and the company says it is trying to save up and cut other costs. But for many Japanese, the company’s assurances inspire little confidence. Two members of Japan’s national legislature, speaking on the condition of anonymity to share what they describe as sensitive details, say Tepco continues to spend irresponsibly on lobbying politicians, offering them free trips to nuclear sites that include meals and lodging in hot springs resorts. A Tepco spokesman said the company does not offer such trips.

Fukushima has ‘new leak of radioactive water which may have entered the Pacific Ocean’

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  • At least 430 litres spilled when workers overfilled a storage tank 


Japan’s crippled Fukushima nuclear plant has a new leak of radioactive water which may have entered the Pacific Ocean. 

The operator of the meltdown-plagued plant says at least 430 litres spilled when workers overfilled a storage tank that lacked a gauge that could have warned them of the danger.

The amount is tiny compared to the untold thousands of tons of radioactive water that have leaked, much of it into the Pacific Ocean, since a massive earthquake and tsunami wrecked the plant in 2011. 

Concerning: Japan's crippled Fukushima nuclear plant has a new leak of radioactive water which may have entered the Pacific Ocean

Concerning: Japan’s crippled Fukushima nuclear plant has a new leak of radioactive water which may have entered the Pacific Ocean

Danger: The operator of the meltdown-plagued plant says at least 430 litres spilled when workers overfilled a storage tank that lacked a gauge that could have warned them of the danger

But the error is one of many the operator has committed as it struggles to manage a seemingly endless, tainted flow.

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Plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. said this morning that workers detected the water spilling from the top of one large tank when they were patrolling the site the night before. 

The tank is one of about 1,000 erected on the grounds around the plant to hold water used to cool the melted nuclear fuel in the broken reactors. 

Wrecked: This aerial view shows the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station 2011

Wrecked: This aerial view shows the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station in 2011.

TEPCO said the water spilled out of a concrete barrier surrounding the tank and believed that most of it reached the sea via a ditch next to the river. 

The new leak is sure to add to public concern and criticism of TEPCO and the government for their handling of the nuclear crisis. 

In August, the utility reported a 300-ton leak from another storage tank, one of a string of leaks in recent months. 

That came after the utility acknowledged that contaminated groundwater was seeping into ocean at a rate of 300 tons a day. 

TEPCO spokesman Masayuki Ono told an urgent news conference Thursday that the overflow occurred at a tank without a water gauge and standing on an unlevel ground, slightly tilting toward the sea. 

The tank was already nearly full, but workers pumped in more contaminated water into it to maximize capacity as the plant was facing storage crunch. 

Dangerous: Workers spray water to cool down the spent nuclear fuel in the fourth reactor building at Fukushima in 2011

Dangerous: Workers spray water to cool down the spent nuclear fuel in the fourth reactor building at Fukushima in 2011.

Experts have faulted TEPCO for sloppiness in its handling of the water management, including insufficient tank inspection records, lack of water gauges, as well as connecting hoses lying directly on the grass-covered ground. 

Until recently, only one worker was assigned to 500 tanks in a two-hour patrol. 

In recent meetings, regulators criticized TEPCO for even lacking basic skills to properly measure radioactivity in contaminated areas, and taking too long to find causes in case of problems.

They also have criticized the one-foot (30-centimetre) high protective barriers around the tanks as being too low. 

The government has said it will spend $470 billion to build an underground ‘ice wall’ around the reactor and turbine buildings to block groundwater inflows and prevent potential leaks from spreading. 

It is also funding more advanced water treatment equipment to make the contaminated water clean enough to be eventually released into the sea. 

People wear face masks as they visit the cemetery at the tsunami destroyed coastal area of the evacuated town of Namie

People wear face masks as they visit the cemetery at the tsunami destroyed coastal area of the evacuated town of Namie.

The level of radiation is seen near the abandoned civic centre at the tsunami destroyed coastal area of the evacuated town of Namie

The level of radiation is seen near the abandoned civic centre at the tsunami destroyed coastal area of the evacuated town of Namie

Government ‘must step in’ to halt Fukushima leaks.

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Ministers called on to intervene as regulators upgrade severity level of the leakage.

Pressure is mounting on the Japanese government to intervene in the clean-up of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant after experts voiced fears that the power company responsible for the facility is unable to cope.

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The leakage earlier this month of hundreds of tonnes of radioactive water — the most serious incident at the beleaguered plant since it was devastated by a tsunami in March 2011 — highlights the failure by the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) to properly manage the operation. If the government fails to act, prime minister Shinzo Abe’s pro-nuclear stance may be jeopardized, analysts told Nature.

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“It’s clear that TEPCO is unable to solve the problems on its own,” says Tsutomu Toichi, managing director and chief economist at the Institute of Energy Economics in Tokyo. “The government has to step in to ensure these problems are solved quickly. It is going to have to provide funds, as well as a plan for moving forward, and explain this to the public in a way that is easy to understand.”

Wiktor Frid, a nuclear expert with the Swedish Radiation Safety Authority in Stockholm, adds, “That water leaked from a tank unnoticed for several days is alarming and extremely embarrassing for TEPCO”.

The leak has also led to renewed concerns over ocean contamination and food safety, with local fishing cooperatives suspending trial catches and one oceanographer saying that further leaks would have “severe” consequences for marine life.

Incident upgrade

The leak of some 300 tonnes of partially treated water that had been used to cool melted nuclear rods from the destroyed reactors was reported by TEPCO on 19 August. The radioactivity of the water stands at about 80 megabecquerels per litre, about 1% of what it was before treatment by an on-site purification system. Japan’s Nuclear Regulation Authority initially labelled the incident a level 1 event (known as an ‘anomaly’) on the International Nuclear Event Scale, but yesterday upgraded it to level 3(‘serious incident’), citing the large amount of contaminated water leaked and the fact that a safety buffer was not available for the water tank in question.

At present, TEPCO is storing more than 300,000 tonnes of radioactive water on the site of the destroyed Fukushima Daiichi plant. Radioactive caesium isotopes are being removed from the water by an advanced liquid-processing system built after the accident, but a facility for removing strontium isotopes is not yet ready. Tritium, another harmful radionuclide, cannot be safely removed by any known purification system because it is incorporated within water molecules.

The leaked water is thought to have seeped into the ground and will eventually reach the sea adjacent to the plant. The storage site near Fukushima’s reactor 4, where the leak was discovered, lies some 50 metres above sea level and is just a few hundred metres from the coast.

Measures proposed so far to prevent the polluted water from flowing into the sea — such as freezing or excavating the soil surrounding the storage site — seem to be either very expensive or technically unfeasible, says Joachim Knebel, a nuclear expert and chief science officer at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany.

“We can’t really assess the situation from far away,” he says. “But it appears to me that none of the proposed measures would work. TEPCO would be well advised to seek international expertise in coping with the problems.”

Several countries, including Russia, have offered to assist with the company’s clean-up efforts, and TEPCO said last week that it will consider accepting outside help. On Monday, it also announced a series of measures, including the installation of a new central control system, to mitigate the risk of future leaks.

“Some tanks have automatic monitoring equipment and some don’t,” says Yo Koshimizu, a TEPCO spokesman. “We are currently determining whether to add such equipment to all of the tanks.”

Storage situation

Some 400 tonnes of cooling water are being collected in tanks each day. The growing fleet of storage tanks — which currently stands at about 1,000 — is a source of alarm for experts, who fear that huge amounts of contaminated water will eventually have to be dumped into the ocean. Worse still, some 300 tonnes of groundwater highly contaminated with caesium-137, which has a 30-year half-life, are thought to be flowing from beneath the destroyed reactors into the sea every day.

The potential for harm is huge, says Jota Kanda, an oceanographer at the Tokyo University of Marine Science and Technology who monitors radionuclide distribution in sediments and biota off Fukushima1.

“The effects of one relatively small leak may be insignificant,” he says. “But there are huge amounts of radionuclides in these tanks and the water may have to be stored for a long time to come. If more leaks were to occur the consequences might be severe.”

The Fukushima nuclear accident resulted in the largest ever accidental release of radioactivity to the oceans. Some 80% of all the radionuclides released from Fukushima ended up in the Pacific2. In some local fish, high residual levels of radioactivity were measured two years after the accident. Commercial fishing in the area is still banned.

But it is unclear how much residual radioactive contamination is still entering the sea from leaks around the Fukushima plant, says Scott Fowler, a marine ecologist at Stony Brook University in New York who has been involved in previous assessments of contamination levels in the ocean near Fukushima.

To track changes in coastal waters and predict when seafood species in the region may be safe to consume, it will be necessary to establish a ‘temporal data set’ — that is, to measure the levels and distributions of contaminant radionuclides at a given location over time, he says.

“Even if one assumes that leaks from the plant into the sea will eventually be stopped, residual contamination would continue to be present in the adjacent marine ecosystem for many years,” he says. “So the contamination of long-lived radionuclides in different organisms in the local marine food webs needs to be monitored continually.”

Source: Nature

Japan declared “state of emergency” after radioactive leak is found.

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Japan’s nuclear watchdog has now declared the leak of radioactive water from Fukushima a “state of emergency.” Each day, 300 tons of radioactive water seeps into the ocean, and it’s now clear that TEPCO has engage in a two-and-a-half-year cover-up of immense magnitude. “I believe it’s been leaking into the ocean from the start of the crisis two-and-a-half years ago,” disclosed a 12-year TEPCO veteran named Suzuki-san (SOURCE) “There are still reactor buildings we haven’t gotten into yet,” said another worker named Fujimoto-san. “So there’s always the possibility of another explosion…” TEPCO workers sprayed with wildly radioactive water while waiting for a bus Just how out of control is the situation at Fukushima? It’s so out of control that TEPCO recently had to admit 10 of its workers were somehow — yeah, see if you can figure this out — sprayed with highly radioactive water while waiting for a bus. “The workers’ exposure above the neck was found to be as much as 10 becquerels per square centimeter,” reports Bloomberg.com How exactly did highly radioactive water manage to find its way to a bus stop in the first place? TEPCO isn’t sure. It’s confusing with all those radiation alarms going off all the time. In order to concentrate, the company has found it’s easier to just disable all the alarms and pretend nothing’s wrong.

 

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The TEPCO cover-up:
To fully grasp the extent of the TEPCO denial, realize that only recently did the company finally admit that radioactive groundwater has been leaking into the ocean. This follows years of stark denials from the company, whose executes have exhibited a remarkable ability to deny reality even when their own workers are dying in droves from cancer. It’s no exaggeration to say that TEPCO’s downplaying of the full extent of the Fukushima disaster has put tens of millions of lives at risk — people who should have been warned about radiation but were denied that information due to the TEPCO cover-up. “At this current time in July of 2013, Fukushima is 80 to 100x more expansive and more intense — letting out about 100x more of the radiation of Chernobyl,” reports Dr. Simon Atkins Phoenix Rising Radio on a BlogTalkRadio interview. “The problem with Fukushima is that it’s not only continuing for 865 days… I mean, let’s wrap our minds around that for a second — it has been leaking out radiation in increasing volumes for 865 days.”

Japan is a society that shuns whistleblowers:
Why has TEPCO been able to cover up the truth about Fukushima for so long? Because Japan is a society of mass conformity. The idea of keeping your head down and not “rocking the boat” is deeply embedded in Japanese culture. Japan is not a nation of “rugged individualism” but of conformist acquiescence. As a result, whistleblowers are shunned, and there is immense peer pressure to defend the status quo… even when it’s a terrible lie. This culture of conformity at all costs is precisely what allows companies like TEPCO to continue operating extremely dangerous nuclear power plants with virtually no accountability. While Japan has entire museums dedicated to the horrifying history of two Japanese cities being bombed by the United States at the end of World War II, when Japan’s own power company is involved in a radiological disaster of similar magnitude, the entire incident gets swept under the rug. Radiation? What radiation? If the government says there’s no radiation, then there’s no radiation! After all, it’s invisible!

Why the U.S. government plays along with the cover-up:
The U.S. government, of course, plays along with the charade because its own top weapons manufacturer — General Electric — designed and built the Fukushima Daiichi power plant in the first place. And the design decisions made by GE, such as storing spent fuel rods in large pools high above the ground, now look not just incompetent but downright idiotic. It turns out there was never any long-term plan to dispose of the spent fuel rods. The idea was to just let them build up over time until someone else inherited the problem. So while Japan and the USA play this game of “let’s all pretend nothing happened,” citizens of both countries continue to be exposed to a relentless wave of deadly radiation that now dwarfs the total radiation release of Chernobyl (which the U.S. media played up in a huge way because the disaster made the Russians look incompetent). The only reason TEPCO is finally getting around to admitting the truth in all this is because you can’t rig all the Geiger counters forever. Radiation follows the laws of physics and atomic decay, not the whims of lying politicians and bureaucrats. As a result, the real story eventually comes out as we’re starting to see right now.

The Fukushima disaster is likely to get far worse, if you can believe that: 
The upshot is that the Fukushima disaster is not only far worse than you’ve been told; it’s very likely going to be worse than you could ever imagine. The radiation leak isn’t plugged, in other words, and another explosion — which many experts believe might be imminent — would release thousands of times more nuclear material into the open environment. Ultimately, the entire Northern hemisphere has been placed at risk by a bunch of corporate bureaucrats who thought building a nuclear facility in the path of a sure-to-happen tidal wave was a fantastic idea. Instead of acknowledging the problem and working to fix it like a responsible person would, our world’s top politicians and ass-coverers have decided it is in their best short-term interests to play along with the TEPCO fairy tale which ridiculously pretends that radioactive leaks can be controlled by wishful thinking.

Remember: Governments can lie about the national debt, health care costs, inflation and unemployment, but they cannot lie about radiation for very long. Sooner or later the physics of it all simply cannot be denied.

Source: Natural News

FUKUSHIMA: RADIOACTIVE CESIUM LEVELS JUMP 9,000 PERCENT IN JUST THREE DAYS, NOBODY KNOWS WHY.

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 Some of the highest levels of ionizing radiation yet detected since the disaster first occurred were recently recorded at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power facility in Japan, according to shocking new reports. The Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), which runs the crippled nuclear plant, says levels of radioactive cesium in a water well were 9,000 percent higher on July 8, 2013, than they were three days earlier, and nobody knows why this is the case.

The Asahi Shimbun reports that TEPCO observed the spike after testing water in a well on the seaward side of Fukushima’s No. 2 reactor. According to readings taken, radioactive cesium levels registered at an astounding 27,000 becquerels per liter (Bq/l), which is the highest ever since March 11, 2011, when the tsunami and earthquake first struck the plant. At this point, the cause of the spike is still unknown.

“It is unclear whether the radioactive water is leaking into the sea,” said a TEPCO official, following the discovery. “After gathering needed data, we will conduct analyses.”

As you may recall, radioactive water from the No. 2 well was found to have been leaking about a month after the disaster struck in April 2011. At that time, about 9,000 Bq/l of cesium-134 and 18,000 Bq/l of cesium-137 were detected in water samples. These amounts are 150 and 200 times higher, respectively, than the maximum level legally permitted.

At the same time, levels of other harmful forms of radiation, including strontium, have remained oddly consistent, which has many officials scratching their heads. According to the most recent data, radioactive strontium levels remained mostly steady around 890,000 Bq/l both before and after the CESIUM spike.

“We do not know why only cesium levels have risen,” added the TEPCO official.

Radioactive tritium levels are also spiking dramatically, say officials

Besides cesium, radioactive tritium has also been detected in significantly higher amounts near the No. 2 well. According to The Wall Street Journal (WSJ), tritium levels in groundwater near the reactor have jumped 17-fold since December, and are continuing to rise with each passing day. Since May, tritium levels have increased a staggering 20 percent.

“[T]he tritium level that TEPCO measured on July 5 in one of its coastal monitoring wells near reactor No. 2 is ten times above Japan’s safety standard of 60,000 becquerels per liter, and rising,” writes Phred Dvorak for the WSJ. “That’s the highest such level the company has recorded since the incident.”

What this all suggests, of course, is that the FUKUSHIMA disaster is far from over, and may only be in the early stages of unleashing massive environmental destruction. Despite the fact that more than two years have passed since the disaster’s onset, the situation appears to be intensifying with no end in sight, which could lead to much more serious problems in the future.

Meanwhile, as much as 93 billion becquerels of RADIOACTIVE substances are believed to still be pouring into the Pacific Ocean every single day as a result of the Fukushima disaster. Reports from back in March indicate that, since the disaster, a total of 16.1 trillion becquerels of just cesium-137 are believed to have leaked into seawater.

“Once again, TEPCO release the bad news in a drip, drip, drip mode,” wrote one commenter on an ENENews.com report on the issue. “These destroyed nuclear reactors are going to pop and sputter for thousands of years to come. Changes in the configuration of residual melted fuel remaining in and around the plants will create ongoing criticalities, with changing cooling water and groundwater flows.”

Source: http://rawforbeauty.com

Radioactive Levels at Fukushima Jump 9000% in 3 Days.

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Some of the highest levels of ionizing radiation yet detected since the disaster first occurred were recently recorded at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power facility in Japan, according to shocking new reports. The Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), which runs the crippled nuclear plant, says levels of radioactive cesium in a water well were 9,000 percent higher on July 8, 2013, than they were three days earlier, and nobody knows why this is the case.

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The Asahi Shimbun reports that TEPCO observed the spike after testing water in a well on the seaward side of Fukushima’s No. 2 reactor. According to readings taken, radioactive cesium levels registered at an astounding 27,000 becquerels per liter (Bq/l), which is the highest ever since March 11, 2011, when the tsunami and earthquake first struck the plant. At this point, the cause of the spike is still unknown.

“It is unclear whether the radioactive water is leaking into the sea,” said a TEPCO official, following the discovery. “After gathering needed data, we will conduct analyses.”

As you may recall, radioactive water from the No. 2 well was found to have been leaking about a month after the disaster struck in April 2011. At that time, about 9,000 Bq/l of cesium-134 and 18,000 Bq/l of cesium-137 were detected in water samples. These amounts are 150 and 200 times higher, respectively, than the maximum level legally permitted.

At the same time, levels of other harmful forms of radiation, including strontium, have remained oddly consistent, which has many officials scratching their heads. According to the most recent data, radioactive strontium levels remained mostly steady around 890,000 Bq/l both before and after the cesium spike.

“We do not know why only cesium levels have risen,” added the TEPCO official.
Radioactive tritium levels are also spiking dramatically, say officials

Besides cesium, radioactive tritium has also been detected in significantly higher amounts near the No. 2 well. According to The Wall Street Journal (WSJ), tritium levels in groundwater near the reactor have jumped 17-fold since December, and are continuing to rise with each passing day. Since May, tritium levels have increased a staggering 20 percent.

“[T]he tritium level that TEPCO measured on July 5 in one of its coastal monitoring wells near reactor No. 2 is ten times above Japan’s safety standard of 60,000 becquerels per liter, and rising,” writes Phred Dvorak for the WSJ. “That’s the highest such level the company has recorded since the incident.”

What this all suggests, of course, is that the Fukushima disaster is far from over, and may only be in the early stages of unleashing massive environmental destruction. Despite the fact that more than two years have passed since the disaster’s onset, the situation appears to be intensifying with no end in sight, which could lead to much more serious problems in the future.

Meanwhile, as much as 93 billion becquerels of radioactive substances are believed to still be pouring into the Pacific Ocean every single day as a result of the Fukushima disaster. Reports from back in March indicate that, since the disaster, a total of 16.1 trillion becquerels of just cesium-137 are believed to have leaked into seawater.

“Once again, TEPCO release the bad news in a drip, drip, drip mode,” wrote one commenter on an ENENews.com report on the issue. “These destroyed nuclear reactors are going to pop and sputter for thousands of years to come. Changes in the configuration of residual melted fuel remaining in and around the plants will create ongoing criticalities, with changing cooling water and groundwater flows.”

Sources: Raw For Beauty

FUKUSHIMA VICTIMS TO PAY BACK COMPENSATION.

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Two years after the nuclear accident at Fukushima plant, the nuclear industry is accused of evading its responsibilities.

The victims of the nuclear disaster in 2011 were almost forgotten after being placed in little, so-called temporary apartments spread across Japan. TEPCO, the operator of the Fukushima plant, paid “temporary compensation” to the victims, but now people have to pay back the money, the international press reports.

Yukiko Kameya, 68, is one of these victims. She used to live in the town of Futaba, close to the Fukushima nuclear plant, until the tsunami on March 11, 2011. After the nuclear accident, she was moved in a small public housing apartment in Tokyo and received initially $18,000 in compensation from TEPCO. However, she has to pay back $11,000 of the total sum.

“We were living just 1.2 kilometres from the plant, and we escaped with nothing but the clothes on our back,” she said. “We had that money deducted from our compensation. I was surprised, so I called TEPCO and said that they were using dirty tricks, that they were using fraud. Why did they give it to us to if we had to pay it back?”

Companies that were involved in designing and building the Fukushima reactors, such as General Electric, Toshiba and Hitachi, are not required to pay a cent in compensation, a Greenpeace report states.

Aslihan Tumer, Greenpeace’s international nuclear project leader, says some of the companies are still profiting from the reactor.

“Nuclear suppliers are completely protected from accepting any liability or being held accountable in case of an accident,” he said.”GE designed Fukushima Mark 1 reactor, and GE, Hitachi and Toshiba built and continued servicing the reactor, and they are also still making, in some cases, money out of the cleaning efforts, as well as the contamination.”

With the operator TEPCO nationalized, the Japanese taxpayer is now paying most of the compensation bill for the disaster.

Source: Tokyo Times