Fukushima Update, 10/17/2013

 

“Fukushima Update, 10/17/2013″

by ENE

• Jiji Press: Tepco’s toxic water failures pitiful: NRA  Tepco is pumping up groundwater and has injected a water-stopping agent into the ground near the plant’s port in order to curb the flow of radioactive groundwater into the sea. Despite such efforts, the levels of cesium-137 in seawater samples collected between the water intakes for reactors 1 and 2 inside the port rose to around 100 becquerels per liter this month from around 10 becquerels between late June and early July.  Radioactive water from the damaged reactors “may be leaking directly into the sea instead of mixing with groundwater before making its way into the sea,” [Nuclear Regulation Authority Commissioner Toyoshi] Fuketa said.

• Vladimir Kovbasyuk, Russian Hydrometeorological Expert: “We analyzed the problems several years ago, when the 2011 earthquake and tornado hit the Fukushima nuclear plant. Radioactive waters will first be carried away to the west coast of North America and only then, on intermingling with other ocean waters, may they return to the Russian coast. Currently, we are measuring radiation levels, and we’ve registered no excess radiation thus far.”

• Hirose Takashi, journalist/former engineer: “As we speak, radioactive material is seeping through Fukushima’s ground. It makes its way underground, reaches the ocean, to finally end up in the sky. This kind of fact does not make the news, so everyone forgets about it. If that was talked about every day in the news, the Japanese population couldn’t ignore it.  In my opinion mass media bear most of the responsibility for it.  Incidents happen because mass media never take the problem seriously. The problem with contamination is that we can only measure it within items surrounding us, in the soil, the ground. A lot of people today own a Geiger counter, but it can only report airborne particles, it only measures Gamma rays. In fact, when researching the radioactive content out from the reactors, and its dispersion, we do not find everything.

It was about 5,000ºC [~9,000ºF] inside the reactors. This was a temperature of colossal magnitude. The uranium and plutonium took on a gas form to escape. I can find all that based on my calculations, but none of this can be detected using a Geiger counter  No one even measures the strontium level. The strontium is the scariest of all. It penetrates and stays resident in bones, causing leukemia. This is particularly dangerous for the growth phase of children exposed today. For children living near contaminated areas like Fukushima, we have to immediately set up a plan for their evacuation. Before Japan lost the war, we organized group evacuations. We managed the escape of children from dangerous areas  This is something that must be done now. But the country does not do anything about it. For that I am calling this country a criminal nation. If we do not act, terrible things are looming for those children. I am worried.”

• Arnie Gundersen, Chief Engineer at Fairewinds Energy Education: “The seismic response of these buildings is not really designed for moist soil. The soil’s a lot wetter now than it was when the plants were designed. So, now you’ve got plants essentially sitting in a mud. And so their seismic response in the event of a severe earthquake is going to be much worse – in other words they might topple. If they build and keep the water in, they risk changing the seismic characteristics of the building, and that’s not a good thing- something called liquefaction – when you have water and soil together and you shake it just right – the soil essentially disappears, taking buildings with it. It can happen at Daiichi because of the things that Tokyo Electric is doing to keep the radiation from getting into Pacific.”

• Arnie Gundersen, Fairewinds Chief Engineer, Oct. 14, 2013: “You have an inadequate firm, under funded from the Japanese government. And until those two problems get solved, we will have leaks and building failures in the future.”

• Kei Takahashi, former Fukushima Daiichi worker: “If it collapses due to a large earthquake, we humans will not be able to control the situation. This possibility scares me. The work environment is the worst you can possibly imagine. It is highly contaminated and the buildings are in a very bad state. The level of radioactivity is so high.”

• Daisuke Kamijo, owner/operator of children’s center in Minamisoma, 20 kilometers north of Fukushima Daiichi: “I’m aware that anything can happen at any time. It’s a time bomb and the clock is still ticking.”

• Taiki Kamijo, teenager living in Minamisoma, 20 kilometers north of Fukushima Daiichi: “If there’s another big earthquake, what will become of the reactors? I’m worried. My friends and I discuss this. We don’t want to die. We’re all very worried.”

• Foreign Policy in Focus, Pastreich and Hartsell, Sept. 3, 2013: “The Century-Long Challenge to Respond to Fukushima: “The worst case of nuclear contamination the world has ever seen. Radiation continues to leak from the crippled Fukushima Daiichi site into groundwater, threatening to contaminate the entire Pacific Ocean. The cleanup will require an unprecedented global effort. Solving the Fukushima Daiichi crisis needs to be considered a challenge akin to putting a person on the moon in the 1960s. The situation potentially puts the health of hundreds of millions at risk. To solve the Fukushima Daiichi problem will require enlisting the best and the brightest to come up with a long-term plan to be implemented over the next century. The Fukushima disaster is a crisis for all of humanity.”

• Experts have said they suspect that more contaminated water is seeping out from under the melted-down reactors into the groundwater and the Pacific. Elevated levels of radioactive cesium in surrounding waters seem to confirm those suspicions. Tepco has said those leaks are not directly from beneath the reactors, but from maintenance tunnels that run along the coast and remain contaminated from the early days of the disaster. But it also acknowledges that the water beneath the reactors is extremely contaminated, and experts say that if it does get into the ocean, it will surpass even the leaks that occurred in the disaster’s early days. (Study: Up to 47 quadrillion becquerels of cesium-137 released into Pacific from Fukushima)

“That prospect scares me,” Michio Aoyama, a senior scientist in the Oceanography and Geochemistry Research Department at the government-affiliated Meteorological Research Institute, said in an interview this month. “It’s the ultimate, worst-case scenario,” Professor Aoyama said.

• Study: Fukushima released 100 quadrillion becquerels of cesium into atmosphere… In just ONE day- About equal to Chernobyl’s total release.”