Fukushima nuclear plant radiation spiking

[The Stig]

Original story HERE (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/japan/10278717/Radiation-at-Fukushima-spikes-as-Japan-holds-earthquake-drill.html) at The Telegraph




Radiation at Fukushima spikes as Japan holds earthquake drill

Radiation near a tank holding highly contaminated water at Japan's Fukushima nuclear plant has spiked 18-fold, as more than one million Japanese took part in an earthquake drill.

9:26AM BST 01 Sep 2013

Radiation of 1,800 millisieverts per hour – enough to kill an exposed person in four hours – was detected near the bottom of one storage tank on Saturday, Tokyo Electric Power Co, also known as Tepco, said.

An Aug. 22 readings measured radiation of 100 millisieverts per hour at the same tank. Japanese law has set an annual radiation exposure safety threshold of 50 millisieverts for nuclear plant workers during normal hours.

Last month, Tepco admitted that water from the tank was leaking. Japan's nuclear regulator later raised the severity of the leak from a level 1 "anomaly" to a level 3 "serious incident" on an international scale for radiation releases.

The Fukushima Daiichi power plant north of Tokyo was devastated by a tsunami on March 11, 2011 that resulted in fuel-rod meltdowns at three reactors, radioactive contamination of the air, sea and food and the evacuation of 160,000 people.

It sparked the worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl a quarter of a century earlier.

While there were no new leaks found at the tank, a Tepco spokesman said another leak had been detected from a pipe connecting two other tanks nearby.

With no one seeming to know how to bring the crisis to an end, Tepco said last week it would invite foreign decommissioning experts to advise it on how to deal with the highly radioactive water leaking from the site.

Separately, more than one million Japanese took part in a national disaster drill on Sunday as the country assessed its emergency readiness in the wake of a massive quake and tsunami in 2011.

Timed to commemorate the anniversary of the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923 which killed more than 100,000 people, the national Disaster Prevention Day has been held every year since 1960.

This year's drill saw the government simulate its response to a powerful earthquake in central to western Japan, a major natural disaster that researchers say may occur within 30 years or so.

The government estimates that a magnitude-9.1 temblor would kill over 320,000 people in the worst-case scenario.

Shinzo Abe, the prime minister, and all of his ministers gathered at the premier's residence and held a mock disaster response meeting, before inspecting a drill site near Tokyo.

A total of 1.33 million people are expected to participate in exercises during the day, Kyodo News agency said.

Edited by Chris Irvine

[The Stig]

Original story HERE (http://www.cnn.com/2013/09/01/world/asia/japan-fukushima-radiation-spike/index.html?hpt=hp_inthenews) at CNN



Fukushima radiation levels spike, company says
By Brian Walker, CNN

(CNN) -- There's been a sharp spike in radiation levels measured in the pipes and containers holding water at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in Japan.

But the company in charge of cleaning it up says that only a single drop of the highly contaminated water escaped the holding tanks.

Tokyo Electric Power Company said it is confident it can provide safety for workers dealing with the problem.

"We will find out the cause of this issue and make proper counter measures immediately, and continue to make every effort to secure safety of workers," the company said in a statement released Sunday.

TEPCO found high radiation readings at the contaminated water storage tanks and pipe Saturday. The four locations are the bottom of three tanks and a pipe connecting tanks in separate area.

The highest reading as 1800 millisieverts per hour at the bottom fringe of the tank. 220 and 70 mSv were measured at the bottom of other two tanks. And TEPCO said they found a dried stain under the pipe with 230 mSv/h radiation measurement.

One drop of liquid fell when a staff member pressed on insulation material around the pipe. But TEPCO said no contaminated water leak is expected as there were no change in the water level in tanks.

The enormous tanks are identical to the container that was announced last week to have leaked 300 tons of highly toxic water and sparking a hike to the threat level to "serious."

TEPCO will investigate the cause and look further if there were any leakage.

But TEPCO also took issue with reporting by some news outlets that the new radiation levels were high enough to cause death after several hours of exposure.

It said the highest levels measured were so-called beta radiation, which quickly dissipates over short distances and is easily shielded through the use of thin sheets of metal and foil.

"Since beta radiation is weak and can be blocked by a thin metal sheet such as aluminum, we think that we can control radiation exposure by using proper equipments and cloths," the company added.

[The Stig]

Original story HERE (http://www.dw.de/can-japans-government-stop-the-daiichi-crisis/a-17066352) at Deutche Welle




Nuclear
Can Japan's government stop the Daiichi crisis?

With one measure after another failing to stop the seepage of hundreds of tons of contaminated water from the crippled Fukushima plant, the government of Japan has stepped in. But critics say it is too little, too late.

The Japanese government announced that it will spend Y47 billion (US$ 473 million) to plug the leaks and cleanse water that has become radioactive after being used to cool four reactors damaged in the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami. At the same time, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe admitted that efforts to date by Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) have not been comprehensive.

"Instead of the ad hoc approaches that have been taken in the past, we put together a basic policy today that will offer a fundamental solution to the problem of contaminated water," Abe told members of the Nuclear Emergency Response Headquarters in Tokyo on Tuesday, September 3rd.

"The world is closely watching to see whether the decommissioning of the Fukushima Dai-Ichi plant, including the contaminated water problem, can be achieved," he said. According to government figures, an estimated 300 tons of radioactive water has been leaking every day into the Pacific Ocean since the accident. Moreover, TEPCO admitted last week that 300 tons of toxic water had spilled out of one of the some 1,000 tanks on the site before the leak was noticed.

Efforts to date fail

In the most recent problem to emerge, radiation readings at the facility have soared 20 percent to their highest level yet, the Nuclear Regulation Authority announced Monday. Readings close to water tanks that have been leaking tons of contaminated water have spiked to 2,200 millisieverts - a level that would prove fatal to a human in a matter of hours.

The key elements of the government's plan to halt the leak include drilling nearly 30 meters into the ground around the reactors and pumping in water chilled to minus 40 degrees. This wall of frozen earth should then prevent more contaminated water from coming into contact with groundwater and escaping into the Pacific Ocean.

New water treatment systems will also be constructed at the plant to deal with the thousands of tons of radioactive water collected since March 2011.

Neither of the new approaches has ever been attempted on such a scale and there are concerns that they might not work.

"I just don't know if this will be adequate, but I suspect this is just a starting move by the government to take over a significant portion of the safety and security situation at Fukushima," said Jun Okumura, a political analyst at the Eurasia Group.

"It looks very much as if TEPCO has not been able to get on top of the situation at the plant, as well as not being able to assure the Japanese public that it is getting things under control," he said.

Failure to act

In light on this development, nuclear experts argue the government should have stepped in much earlier. "This happened 30 months ago and TEPCO told the government that they could handle it - perhaps they were overly optimistic or they did not understand the scope of the problem," Tom Snitch, a professor at the University of Maryland, told DW. "Unfortunately, the government believed them," he added.

The international nuclear community has come up with a number of proposals that could help at Fukushima, Snitch said, but it has so far been largely excluded from implementing the plans.

"There are solutions to the issues at Fukushima, but they are technical," he said. "The problem is that Tokyo cannot make the political decisions to put these solutions in place."

With nearly every day bringing new problems at the damaged Fukushima nuclear plant, Tokyo Electric Power Co. appears to have admitted defeat in its effort to decommission the reactors on its own. (27.08.2013)

According to the scientist, the Japanese say that US firms do not have the correct technology to decommission Fukushima, claiming that they have worked on US plants that were used to make weapons.

But Snitch disagrees with this argument saying this is a false pretense that Japan is using to keep US and British firms out of the cleanup: "Nuclear physics is the same regardless of the end use."

'Unrealistic hopes'

The nuclear expert believes that Tokyo has no choice but to take some tough decisions and inform the Japanese public and the rest of the world of what it has to do. Snitch says the government needs to tell the fisherman that contaminated water will be dispersed into the ocean. They also need to tell the residents of some of the towns within the 20 km zone that they are never going back to their homes, he added. "These people have been given unrealistic hopes for 30 months that things can go back to what they were on March 10, 2011. This is simply not true and will not happen."

Furthermore, experts emphasize that decisions have to be made on where to store the 1,533 spent fuel rods and warehouses full of thousands of protection suits, gloves, respirators and other equipment that has become contaminated with radiation, he said.

Snitch is of the opinion that if the Japanese had taken effective steps on from the start and dealt with the water issue, they would not have used Areva filters which did not work, would not have purchased the ALPS [Multi-nuclide Removal Equipment], which broke, and they would not have hundreds of leaky metal tanks, bolted together on uneven ground and leaking.

"In life, when facing a crisis, people must first admit that they have a problem," he added. "Only then can they ask for help."