It’s now approaching three months since an earthquake/tsunami double-punch led to a nuclear crisis at the Tokyo Electric Power Corporation (TEPCO) facilities in Fukushima, Japan. The earthquakes continue, even as rescue crews struggle to sort through rubble and search for survivors.
TEPCO now admits that three of its reactors have “melted down” (not a scientific term), and the Japanese government is gradually being forced to admit that a major release of radionuclides is well underway – a release that cannot be contained within Japan.
Meanwhile, the if-it-bleeds-it-leads mediascape has diverted international attention to the NATO bombardment of Libya (which is also incidentally a distraction from the grassroots labour organizing that continues to challenge the remnants of the western-financed military junta in Egypt). It’s like Fukushima never even happened.
Just like Chernobyl, the effects of Fukushima will be felt for generations to come. Despite the dissolution of the USSR, information about the devestating effects of the Chernobyl accident continue to be dumbed down and/or blacked out from public consciousness. We must not allow the same to happen with Fukushima.
Japan’s Citizens’ Nuclear Information Center (CNIC) is an anti-nuclear public interest organization dedicated to securing a safe, nuclear-free world. The organization’s website contains several articles and videos of presentations made to global media outlets regarding the crisis in Fukushima. They are now also promoting Japan’s Green Action blog for updates on Fukushima.
CNIC is coordinating and presenting analysis on the Fukushima crisis from nuclear industry insiders – scientists and engineers, in particular – and health professionals who have explained the dangers of exposure to radionuclides and the meaning of “effective dose” that coincides with the Sievert measurement.
On 7 April 2011, CNIC published a Statement by Scientists and Engineers Concerning Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant (no.2):
Even if we manage to avoid the worst case scenario in which any of the pressure vessels and the containment vessels are severely damaged that would have allowed for an explosive outflow of radioactive materials in a large quantity, it is certain that the radioactive leakage will last for a long time to come. The atmosphere, water, and soil around the nuclear plant have already been contaminated in the vicinity of the nuclear facilities, and contamination around the nuclear plants will continue. Indeed we must not let our attention drift away from this dismal picture.
In the meantime, it has been reported that those workers who have struggled to contain this disaster at the nuclear plant have been exposed to massive doses of radiation, and that a large amount of water containing a high concentration of radioactivity has been released to contaminate the nearby ocean waters. Agricultural, dairy and marine products have been contaminated by radioactivity, and, it is reported daily in the mass media that, even in cases where the actual degree of contamination is negligible, some of the produce from the region has lost market value as merchandise. Consequently an increasing number of farmers and fishermen have lost their livelihoods and now face hardship. We are once again reminded of how big a menace to people’s lives a nuclear accident can be.
In a 26 April 2011 Joint Statement on the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Disaster On the Occasion of the 25th Anniversary of the Chernobyl Nuclear Disaster, CNIC and 87 other Japanese non-governmental organizations (NGOs) reported:
The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, precipitated by the huge earthquake and ensuing tsunamis that hit eastern Japan on March 11, has created fear of radiation exposure and radioactive contamination not just in Japan, but throughout the world.
The Japanese Government, electric power companies and academics who served them boasted that Japan’s nuclear power plants were completely safe, that a nuclear accident would not occur. Their responsibility is heavy indeed. Many people had long warned of precisely the situation that is now in progress — of the danger of a huge earthquake and tsunami, of an accident caused by a loss of power supply, of the danger of concentrating several plants on a single site, of the problems facing suicide squads required to respond to a major accident, of the defects of emergency response preparations which only covered a 10 kilometer radius — but these warnings were not taken seriously. The attitude of promoting nuclear energy no matter what is one of the reasons why the response on this occasion by the Japanese Government and Tokyo Electric Power Company has at each stage been too late. To nevertheless claim that this was “beyond expectations†is both immoral and criminal.
Reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station have not achieved cold shut down. The situation continues to be unpredictable. It is important to maintain cooling function and to take measures to prevent further contamination from releases and leaks of radioactive material. It goes without saying that in doing so sufficient consideration must be given to the safety of the workers. Radiation exposure standards for residents should not be set excessively high to meet accident circumstances. Rather, it is necessary to rapidly take all steps to enable the earliest possible adherence to the original standard of less than 1 millisievert per year. Decommissioning and disposal of the huge heap of radioactive waste that Fukushima Daiichi has become will probably be a long battle extending over decades.
We have continued to oppose nuclear power and nuclear facilities, calling for a phase out of nuclear energy through activities throughout Japan. Hoping for the earliest possible end to the crisis at Fukushima Daiichi, whatever we are able to do together we wish to do it now.
As a first step we are issuing this joint statement today, 25 years after the Chernobyl accident. At an appropriate time we will launch a large national action demanding a formal decision to permanently close down the Fukushima Daiichi and Fukushima Daini Nuclear Power Stations, to cancel the nuclear fuel cycle program, to cancel plans to build new nuclear reactors and to shut down aging nuclear reactors and we will propose a process for achieving a steady phase out of nuclear energy.
We refuse to allow the earth to be further subjected to radioactive contamination and radiation exposure. For the sake of all living beings, let us walk together towards the achievement of a nuclear-free society.
Bruce Cockburn’s Radium Rain was written in response to Chernobyl on 8 May 1986, in Cologne, Germany. Bruce commented about his Chernobyl experience in an interview published in the 1990 True North/Epic CD release, Interview and Segments:
“Radium Rain, for instance, came out of, uh, my own experience of the aftermath of Chernobyl, in Germany. I’d gotten, I arrived in Germany three days after Chernobyl happened. I had wrestled with myself to some degree before I left, thinking ‘Oh, I don’t know. I wonder about going to Europe at this moment.’ But it seemed like it wouldn’t matter where you were anyway, that stuff’s gonna come down on you sooner or later so I might as well go and see what it looked like. And I did and it was very interesting experience, and, uh, quite frightening in some respects and funny in others. The extremes that people went to. The extremes that governments went to to try to sort of suppress peoples anxiety about the whole thing and it became ridiculous at a certain point, you know. At first they’re saying, and I’m sure it was true of all the governments involved, they were saying Oh, there’s no problem, you know, those stupid Russians just made a mistake, but we’ve got it together, don’t worry about it”. And, you know, the next day they’d be saying ‘Well there’s a little bit of a problem, don’t let your kids play in the dirt’, you know. And the next, the next day, or week later they’d be saying ‘Well, you know, if you’re a mechanic, you should avoid changing the air filters of cars, unless you’re wearing protective clothing, and, you know, if you’re a pedestrian, hold your breath when cars go by, cuz of the dust’, you know. And I mean it’s absurd. How can you possibly not breath when the cars are going by on the street? And it just went from the horrific to the ridiculous.”
They’re hosing down trucks at the border under a rainbow sign –
The raindrops falling on my head burn into my mind
On a hillside in the distance there’s a patch of green sunshine
Ain’t it a shame
Ain’t it a shame
About the radium rain
Everyday in the paper you can watch the numbers rise
No such event can over take us here, we’re much too wise
In the meantime don’t eat anything that grows and don’t breathe when the cars go by
Ain’t it a shame
Ain’t it a shame
About the radium rain
Big motorcycle rumbles out of the rain like some creation of mist
There’s a man on a roof with a blindfold on and a hand grenade in his fist
I walk stiff, with teeth clenched tight, filled with nostalgia for a clean wind’s kiss
Ain’t it a shame
Ain’t it a shame
About the radium rain
A flock of birds writes something on the sky in a language I can’t understand
God’s graffiti — but it don’t say why so much evil seems to land on man
When everyone I meet just wants to live and love, and get along as best they can
Ain’t it a shame
Ain’t it a shame
About the radium rain
Here’s a quick summary from Michio Kaku that speaks volumes – especially now that most people have long since moved on from Fukushima, as the news cycle takes their consciousness elsewhere:
We could have known a lot more in early March if the nuclear industry and the government did not practice command and control tactics when disseminating information.
Here in Canada some media outlets were in overt damage control mode on behalf of the nuclear industry, rather than doing their (perceived) job of asking critical questions.
In this clip Kaku talks about arguments that TEPCO was having with the government about whether or not to pump seawater into the core to cool it. That shows how weak the government is in exercising its authority of the nuclear industry. They should have been forced to sacrifice the reactor to prevent catastrophe!
A few hours into the crisis I spoke to a nuclear industry insider who told me that the Americans were shipping in coolant to Fukushima. I said why not just pump in sea water? This person told me that it would destroy the reactor, so I said, “They have lost cooling and are unable to restore power to those systems, so isn’t it pretty much f–ked anyway?” He said almost certainly. He also told me that as soon as the fuel rods were exposed, it was pretty much game over. The term “partial meltdown” is essentially meaningless, because once coolant comes off the fuel rods, it is nearly impossible to get it back on – the reactor is that hot!
The failure of the back-up power for cooling systems is unacceptable. I don’t know the TEPCO UPS systems or their designs, but older UPS (uninterrupted power supply) systems are known to be unreliable. The I.T. industry is currently spending huge sums of money to upgrade their systems and there are a shortage of parts – to the point where a black market has evolved.
So telecom gets reliability for its infrastructure, but the nuke industry has done . . . ?
Only a few weeks after Fukushima, a TVA reactor complex in Alabama experienced an unusual event which caused a loss of power to cooling systems “on Wednesday, April 27, at 5:01 p.m. CDT when a partial loss of off-site power, resulting from the series of storms and tornadoes in northern Alabama area, prompted activation of diesel generators to provide backup electric service to the plant.”
NRC spokesman Ken Clark said the plant had batteries to backup the diesel generators but could run on the diesels “indefinitely” since there was nothing blocking the pathways into the plant to replenish the diesel fuel.
And if there was? What if the diesel generators failed?
Nuclear fuel has melted through base of Fukushima plant
The nuclear fuel in three of the reactors at the Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant has melted through the base of the pressure vessels and is pooling in the outer containment vessels, according to a report by the Japanese government.
By Julian Ryall, Tokyo
1:06 AM BST 09 Jun 2011
The findings of the report, which has been given to the International Atomic Energy Agency, were revealed by the Yomiuri newspaper, which described a “melt-through” as being “far worse than a core meltdown” and “the worst possibility in a nuclear accident.”
A spokesman for Tokyo Electric Power Co. said the company is presently revising the road-map for bringing the plant under control, including the time required to achieve cold shutdown of the reactors.
In a best-case scenario, the company says it will be able to achieve that by October, although that may have to be revised in light of the report.
Water that was pumped into the pressure vessels to cool the fuel rods, becoming highly radioactive in the process, has been confirmed to have leaked out of the containment vessels and outside the buildings that house the reactors.
Tepco said it is trying to contain the contaminated water and prevent it from leaking into the sea, but elevated levels of radiation have been confirmed in the ocean off the plant.
The radiation will also have contaminated the soil and plant and animal life around the facility, making the task of cleaning up more difficult and expensive, as well as taking longer.
The experts have also yet to come up with a plan for decommissioning the ruined plant. Studies have estimated that the cost of the accident at Fukushima may rise as high as $250 billion over the next 10 years.
The pressure vessel of the No. 1 reactor is now believed to have suffered damage just five hours after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, contrary to an estimation released by Tepco, which estimated the failure at 15 hours later.
Melt-downs of the fuel in the No. 2 and No. 3 reactors followed over the following days with the molten fuel collecting at the bottom of the pressure vessels before burning through and into the external steel containment vessels.
The fuel appears to be stable at present as it is being cooled by water pumped into the vessels, although it will complicate the emergency recovery plan put forward by the government.
The report comes after Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency doubled its initial estimate of the amount of radioactivity that was released from the plant in the days immediately after it was destroyed by the tsunami.
In early April, the agency said some 370,000 terabecquerels escaped from the facility. It now believes that figure was 770,000 terabecquerels. One terabecquerel is a trillion becquerels, the standard measure of radiation, while the permissible level of iodine-131 for vegetables and fish is 2,000 becquerels per kilogram.
Combined, the two announcements will raise further questions about the true scale of the problem at the plant and the measures being taken to get the situation under control.
“The recovery effort at the plant is likely to be more difficult as they will not be able to use their previous plan to contain the fuel,” Yoshiaki Oka, a professor of nuclear science at Tokyo’s Waseda University told The Daily Telegraph.
“So it may take longer and be more difficult, but it is something they have to do.
“But we now know that this happened at the very beginning of the accident, so I see no particular additional effects on human health,” he said.
Gordon Edward commenting on CTV in Canada about the recent report on Fukushima by the Japanese government. Several media outlets have reported recently that the crisis was “man made” and that “Japanese culture” is partly to blame. See also reports by IAEA, ANS, CRS.
The Japanese government has posted PDF files of the report.