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by 82_28 » Mon Apr 04, 2011 5:22 pm
by AhabsOtherLeg » Mon Apr 04, 2011 5:36 pm
StarmanSkye wrote:BTW: Just in: The bodies of 2 missing TEPCO workers have been found in the turbine-building basement of Reactor #4 --
Managing water is Fukushima priority
By Jonathan Amos Science correspondent, BBC News
The company running the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant has begun releasing low-radioactive wastewater into the sea.
More than 10,000 tonnes will be pumped into the ocean in an operation the Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) says will take several days.
...
Tepco says the low-radioactive water it intends to deliberately release into the sea has iodine-131 levels that are about 100 times the legal limit.
But it stressed in a news conference on Monday that if people ate fish and seaweed caught near the plant every day for a year, their radiation exposure would still be just 0.6 millisieverts. Normal background radiation levels are on the order of 2 millisieverts per year.
...
The Japanese government has approved the release. Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said providing safe conditions to get into the Number 2 reactor to fix equipment was a higher priority.
And while no-one wants to see radioactive releases into the ocean, Japan is at least fortunate in the way the large-scale movement of the ocean works around the country.
The Kuroshio Current is the North Pacific equivalent of the Gulf Stream in the Atlantic. It hugs the Asian continental slope until about 35 degrees North, where it is deflected due east into the deep ocean as the Kuroshio Extension.
This means pollutants in its grasp will tend over time to be driven out into the middle of the Pacific where they will become well mixed and diluted...
"We've been able to resolve the Kuroshio Current now, using just space-based methods, better than we have ever been able to do before," explained Dr Rory Bingham from Newcastle University, UK.
"The Fukushima nuclear power plant lies within 200km of the core of the Kuroshio Extension," he told BBC News.
"There are many caveats here and I cannot say for certain how the extension will impact on any dispersal of radioactive pollutants, but certainly having a detailed knowledge of the currents in this area is essential to understanding where the pollution goes."
by StarmanSkye » Mon Apr 04, 2011 9:37 pm
by seemslikeadream » Mon Apr 04, 2011 9:47 pm
by Nordic » Tue Apr 05, 2011 2:15 am
by Peachtree Pam » Tue Apr 05, 2011 4:27 am
by seemslikeadream » Tue Apr 05, 2011 9:26 am
Japan's ocean radiation hits 7.5 million times legal limit
High readings in fish prompt the government to establish a maximum level for safe consumption
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
Radioactivity in sea up 7.5 million times
Marine life contamination well beyond Japan feared
By KANAKO TAKAHARA
Staff writer
Radioactive iodine-131 readings taken from seawater near the water intake of the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant's No. 2 reactor reached 7.5 million times the legal limit, Tokyo Electric Power Co. admitted Tuesday.
The sample that yielded the high reading was taken Saturday, before Tepco announced Monday it would start releasing radioactive water into the sea, and experts fear the contamination may spread well beyond Japan's shores to affect seafood overseas.
The unstoppable radioactive discharge into the Pacific has prompted experts to sound the alarm, as cesium, which has a much longer half-life than iodine, is expected to concentrate in the upper food chain.
According to Tepco, some 300,000 becquerels per sq. centimeter of radioactive iodine-131 was detected Saturday, while the amount of cesium-134 was 2 million times the maximum amount permitted and cesium-137 was 1.3 million times the amount allowable.
The amount of iodine-131 dropped to 79,000 becquerels per sq. centimeter Sunday but shot up again Monday to 200,000 becquerels, 5 million times the permissible amount.
The level of radioactive iodine in the polluted water inside reactor 2's cracked storage pit had an even higher concentration. A water sample Saturday had 5.2 million becquerels of iodine per sq. centimeter, or 130 million times the maximum amount allowable, and water leaking from the crack had a reading of 5.4 million becquerels, Tepco said.
"It is a considerably high amount," said Hidehiko Nishiyama, spokesman for the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency.
Masayoshi Yamamoto, a professor of radiology at Kanazawa University, said the high level of cesium is the more worrisome find.
"By the time radioactive iodine is taken in by plankton, which is eaten by smaller fish and then by bigger fish, it will be diluted by the sea and the amount will decrease because of its eight-day half-life," Yamamoto said. "But cesium is a bigger problem."
The half-life of cesium-137 is 30 years, while that for cesium-134 is two years. The longer half-life means it will probably concentrate in the upper food chain.
Yamamoto said such radioactive materials are likely to be detected in fish and other marine products in Japan and other nations in the short and long run, posing a serious threat to the seafood industry in other nations as well.
"All of Japan's sea products will probably be labeled unsafe and other nations will blame Japan if radiation is detected in their marine products," Yamamoto said.
Tepco on Monday began the release into the sea of 11,500 tons of low-level radioactive water to make room to store high-level radiation-polluted water in the No. 2 turbine building. The discharge continued Tuesday.
"It is important to transfer the water in the No. 2 turbine building and store it in a place where there is no leak," Nishiyama of the NISA said. "We want to keep the contamination of the sea to a minimum."
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano apologized for the release of radioactive water into the sea but said it was unavoidable to prevent the spread of higher-level radiation.
Fisheries minister Michihiko Kano said the ministry plans to increase its inspections of fish and other marine products for radiation.
On Monday, 4,080 becquerels per kilogram of radioactive iodine was detected in lance fish caught off Ibaraki Prefecture. Fishermen voluntarily suspended its shipment. The health ministry plans to compile radiation criteria for banning marine products.
Three days after Tepco discovered the crack in the reactor 2 storage pit it still hadn't found the source of the high radiation leak seeping into the Pacific.
Tepco initially believed the leak was somewhere in the cable trench that connects the No. 2 turbine building and the pit. But after using milky white bath salt to trace the flow, which appeared to prove that was not the case, the utility began to think it may be seeping through a layer of small stones below the cable trench.
by wintler2 » Tue Apr 05, 2011 9:42 am
Nordic wrote:.. I didn't know what, and I've been looking at moving to the southern hemisphere for quite some time. ..
Leading Climatologist on Fukushima
'We Are Looting the Past and Future to Feed the Present'
By Katrin Elger and Christian Schwägerl
http://www.spiegel.de/international/ger ... 74,00.html
Leading German climate scientist Hans Joachim Schellnhuber talks to SPIEGEL
about the lessons of the Fukushima disaster, the future of nuclear energy in
Germany and why our society needs to be transformed. ..
SPIEGEL: Who or what is to blame for the nuclear catastrophe in Fukushima?
Hans Joachim Schellnhuber: The earthquake was merely the trigger. The crazy
logic we apply in dealing with technical risks is to blame. We only protect
ourselves against hazards to the extent that it's economically feasible at a
given time, and to the extent to which they can be controlled within the normal
operations of a company. But the Richter scale has no upper limit. Why is a
Japanese nuclear power plant only designed to withstand a magnitude 8.2
earthquake, not to mention tsunamis?
SPIEGEL: Presumably because otherwise electricity from nuclear power would have
been too expensive. ..
..
SPIEGEL: How do you feel about the government's plans to temporarily shut down
seven nuclear power plants in Germany?
Schellnhuber: It's the right thing to do. Something resembling what happened in
Japan could also happen in Germany if one of the countless possible chains of
unfortunate events were to occur. It's the unavoidability of the improbable. But
the way the government approached the issue was not very beneficial for
Germany's political culture.
SPIEGEL: Why?
Schellnhuber: Last year they decided that German power plants are safe. This
allows for only two possible conclusions: Either the full truth wasn't
recognized at the time, in which case it was bad policy, or they are reacting in
a purely opportunistic fashion now, against their better judgment. That's even
worse policy.
--
SPIEGEL: Do you feel that the government's abrupt change of course in relation
to its energy policy is adequate?
Schellnhuber: No. It can only be the beginning of a deep-seated shift. The
German Advisory Council on Global Change, which I chair, will soon unveil a
master plan for a transformation of society. Precisely because of Fukushima, we
believe that a new basis of our coexistence is needed.
SPIEGEL: What does that mean?
Schellnhuber: We need a social contract for the 21st century that seals the
common desire to create a sustainable industrial metabolism. We must resolve,
once and for all, to leave our descendants more than a legacy of nuclear hazards
and climate change. This requires empathy across space and time. To promote
this, the rights of future generations should be enshrined in the German
constitution.
SPIEGEL: And specifically?
Schellnhuber: For example, we have to stabilize energy consumption at a
reasonable level. If we would finally start exploiting the full potential for
energy efficiency in Germany, we could get by with at least 30 percent less
energy input -- without being materially worse off. ..
by smoking since 1879 » Tue Apr 05, 2011 11:02 am
by Jeff » Tue Apr 05, 2011 12:02 pm
Plant radiation monitor says levels immeasurable
updated at 15:40 UTC, Apr. 05
A radiation monitor at the troubled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant says workers there are exposed to immeasurable levels of radiation.
The monitor told NHK that no one can enter the plant's No. 1 through 3 reactor buildings because radiation levels are so high that monitoring devices have been rendered useless. He said even levels outside the buildings exceed 100 millisieverts in some places.
...
by crikkett » Tue Apr 05, 2011 4:08 pm
by Peachtree Pam » Wed Apr 06, 2011 4:52 am
by crikkett » Wed Apr 06, 2011 8:45 am
April 6, 2011
Japan stops highly radioactive leak into Pacific
Associated Press
TOKYO, Japan — Workers stopped a highly radioactive leak into the Pacific off Japan's flooded nuclear complex Wednesday, but with the plant far from stabilized, engineers prepared an injection of nitrogen to deter any new hydrogen explosions.
Nitrogen can prevent highly combustible hydrogen from exploding — as it did three times at the compound in the early days of the crisis, set in motion March 11 when cooling systems were crippled by Japan's 9.0-magnitude earthquake and tsunami.
Nuclear officials said there was no immediate threat of more explosions, and but the nitrogen plans were an indication of the serious remaining challenges in stabilizing reactors at the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant and halting the coastal radiation leaks that have cast a shadow on northeastern Japanese fisheries.
Nitrogen normally is present inside the containment that surrounds the reactor core. Technicians will start pumping more in as early as Wednesday evening, said Junichi Matsumoto, a spokesman for the plant operator. They will start with Unit 1, where pressure and temperatures are highest.
"The nitrogen injection is being considered a precaution," said spokesman Hidehiko Nishiyama of Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency.
Workers have suffered near-daily setbacks in their race to cool the plant's reactors since they were slammed by the tsunami, which also destroyed hundreds of miles of coastline and killed as many as 25,000 people.
But there was a rare bit of good news Wednesday when workers finally halted a leak of highly contaminated water into the ocean that had raised concerns about the safety of seafood.
Officials had said the runoff would quickly dissipate in the vast Pacific, but the mere suggestion that fish from the country that gave the world sushi could be at any risk stirred worries throughout the fishing industry.
In the coastal town of Ofunato, Takeyoshi Chiba, who runs the town's wholesale market, is warily watching the developments at the plant, about 120 miles (200 kilometers) down the coast.
"There is a chance that the water from Fukushima will come here," he said, explaining that fishermen in the area still haven't managed to get out to sea again, after the tsunami destroyed nearly all of their boats. "If Tokyo decides to ban purchases from here, we're out of business."
After radiation in waters near the plant was measured at several million times the legal limit and elevated levels were found in some fish, the government on Monday set its first standard on acceptable levels of radiation in seafood.
"Right now, just because the leak has stopped, we are not relieved yet," Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said. "We are checking whether the leak has completely stopped, or whether there may be other leaks."
Stemming the leak of highly radioactive water is progress because it limits the contamination of the surrounding environment, but now workers must turn their focus to their primary goal: cooling the reactors and bringing them under control.
That mission has been hampered by highly contaminated water that is pooling throughout the plant, making it difficult or impossible to access some areas.
The pools have been an unavoidable side-effect of a makeshift cooling method: pumping water into the reactors and letting it gush out wherever it can. That messy process will continue until they can restore normal cooling systems — which recycle water, rather than spitting it out.
Getting rid of that pooling water has vexed TEPCO; it has ordered a floating storage facility and is also requesting a vessel that decontaminates water from Russia.
With those solutions not available for some time, the utility decided to take a drastic measure Monday: pumping 3 million gallons of less contaminated water into the sea to make room in a warehouse for the more highly radioactive water.
The warehouse is almost empty, and officials planned to check it thoroughly for any cracks before starting to fill it up again. The building is not meant to hold water, but it also hasn't leaked yet, so engineers decided it could make a safe receptacle.
"We must carefully check and repair the facility to make the water will not leak out and affect the environment," Nishiyama said.
by seemslikeadream » Wed Apr 06, 2011 9:17 am
U.S. Sees Array of New Threats at Japan’s Nuclear Plant
By JAMES GLANZ and WILLIAM J. BROAD
Published: April 5, 2011
Fukushima Dumping: A Violation of International Law?
Posted by Eben Harrell Wednesday, April 6, 2011 at 8:00 am
Submit a Comment • Related Topics: Dumping, Fukushima, London Convention, Radioactive
Emergency workers on Tuesday managed to stem a leak of highly radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean by injecting a mixture of liquid glass and a hardening agent into Reactor No. 2 at the Fukushima power plant. It was a minor victory in what will certainly be a prolonged battle to safely cool fuel and spent fuel at four crippled reactors.
But while the unintentional leak was closed, Tepco's intentional dumping of 11,500 tons of less radioactive water continued Wednesday—leading to questions about whether Tepco was in violation of international law. Can a company really just dump atomic effluent into the ocean?
In this case, the answer is probably yes. The 1972 Convention on the Prevention of Marine Pollution by Dumping of Wastes and Other Matter, to which Japan is a signatory, bans the dumping of pollution at sea. The London Convention, as it is known for short, includes a special provision for radioactive waste—if a suspected violation has occurred, the IAEA can be asked to complete a technical evaluation and review, which is then considered by a compliance group. But the convention contains a loophole: it only covers the dumping of waste from vessels, aircraft and other man-made structures at sea. It does not cover land-based discharges, as is occurring at Fukushima. That falls under national jurisdiction.
Nonetheless, says David Santillo, a Greenpeace researcher at the University of Exeter in Britain, "The proposals to release such large quantities of radioactive waste from the Fukushima plant are likely to be viewed by other parties to the convention as something that should de facto be prohibited by the ban. If it is possible to install pumping equipment capable of transferring more than 10 000 m3 of contaminated water into the sea then it would seem reasonable to suggest that the same pumping equipment could be used to pump the water to a suitable containment vessel, thereby protecting both human health and the marine environment and allowing proper controlled treatment in due course. There are certainly some rumors circulating already that South Korea and other countries will raise their concerns and objections."
So far, however, such objections have been raised through diplomatic, rather than legal, channels. The South Korean Foreign Ministry told AFP that it expressed concerns through its embassy in Japan that unleashing the contaminated water could infringe on international law and inquired about Tokyo's next steps. Kyodo news agency reported that the concerns centered not around the 1972 London Convention but around the 1986 Convention on Early Notification of a Nuclear Accident, which obligates nations to provide data such as the accident's time, location and radiation releases to affected states when harmful trans-boundary radiation is released.
Addressing this concern, Foreign Minister Takeaki Matsumoto said at a press conference that Tokyo had briefed diplomatic corps in Japan on the start of radioactive water disposal hours before Tepco began releasing the liquid into the Pacific Ocean on Monday evening. But Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano was also contrite at a news conference on Wednesday, Reuters reported, saying that "Perhaps we should have given more detailed explanations to the relevant ministries and to our neighbors. We are instructing the trade and foreign ministries to work better together so that detailed explanations are supplied especially to neighboring countries."
Meanwhile, Tepco announced a minor victory on Tuesday when it used sodium silicate, a chemical agent known as "water glass", to solidify a cracked pit from where highly radioactive water had been seeping. The water had been found to have extremely high radiation and is believed to be the source of spiking radioactive readings in nearby coastal waters.
But a troubling report in the New York Times today makes clear that the battle to contain the Fukushima crisis is far from over. Citing a confidential assessment by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the NYT reports that Fukushima "is facing a wide array of fresh threats that could persist indefinitely, and that in some cases are expected to increase as a result of the very measures being taken to keep the plant stable." Specifically, the report mentions the mounting stresses placed on the containment structures as they fill with water used to try to keep the fuel cool, making them more vulnerable to rupture during an aftershock. Further, the accumulation of salt in several of the reactors from the seawater used as a makeshift coolant may have scaled up into clumps that are preventing the needed circulation of water to keep the fuel cool. David Lochbaum, a nuclear engineer at the Union of Concerned Scientists, told the NYT, ““I thought they were, not out of the woods, but at least at the edge of the woods, but this report paints a different picture. They've got a lot of nasty things to negotiate in the future, and one missed step could make the situation much, much worse.”
by seemslikeadream » Wed Apr 06, 2011 2:06 pm
Special Reports on Japan continue: "The Next Nagasaki: Nuclear Fears Stalk the World"
By Kiyul Chung | 9:06 BeiJing Time,Saturday, March 19, 2011
A second Hiroshima is happening with the partial meltdowns at Fukushima 1 nuclear reactors. We can only hope the eventual toll in lives comes nowhere near close to that of the world's first atomic catastrophe.
The international community is asking: Where will be the next Nagasaki? In the US with its 23 aging reactors of identical design as Fukushima's GE Mark 1 reactors, along with another dozen more of slightly modified design? In France, the world's most nuclear-dependent country? Probably not in Germany or Venezuela, which are cutting back their nuclear programs, nor Britain, the world leader in conversion to offshore wind power. Or even China, a solar-energy paragon, now scaling back plans for new nuclear plants.
Many people are also wondering: How can the only nation that ever experienced atomic bombings become so trusting in nuclear energy? The answer is both simple and complicated. In the modern economy, the energy to run machines is intertwined with national security, foreign policy and warfare.
Uranium-based Progress
World War II was in essence a contest for fossil fuel. An energy-hungry Japan invaded China for its coal and Indonesia for oil reserves. Nazi Germany's blitzkriegs were aimed at oil fields in Romania, Libya and the Caspian Sea region. The United States and Britain fought the Axis Powers to retain their control over the world's fossil fuel, and they're still doing the same in conflicts with OPEC nations and to control Central Asia and East Asia's continental shelf.
To prevent the recurrence of another Pacific War, Washington tried to ween postwar Japan from its dependence on coal and oil. As Japanese industry revived by the time of the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, the US pushed Japan to adopt the "safe and clean" energy of the future - nuclear power. General Electric and Westinghouse were soon given charge of installing a network of nuclear power plants across the island nation, while Tokyo was inducted into the US-launched International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Unlike older fuel resources, nuclear power was the sole proprietary right of the US, which not only dominated uranium mining but also production of boron, the neutron absorbing mineral needed for controlled nuclear reactions.American labs including Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore and Oakridge are the graduate schools for the world's nuclear physicists.
In the same period of heady infatuation with technology, the New York World's Fair of 1964-65 was a debutante ball for a brighter "universal" future based on atom-splitting. The General Electric pavilion was called "Progressland" with a multimedia show featuring a "plasma explosion" of plutonium fusion to awe-struck visitors. Japan served as the model of international citizenship and cooperation under the American aegis of atomic power.The Fukushima nuclear plant designed by GE was commissioned in 1971.
The modern myth of safe nuclear power was alternatively resisted and grudgingly accepted by the Japanese public. In more recent years, once negative perceptions toward nuclear provider Tokyo Electric Power company have shifted. A young computer-graphics designer in Tokyo told me that his generation grew up thinking "TEPCO has a god-like aura of infallibility and power greater than the government." My experience as an editor inside the Japanese press reveals how its corporate image was cunningly promoted with "greenwash" commercials falsely claiming environmental-friendliness and hefty ad revenues for television and print media.
Atomic Energy in the Cold War
Japan was no stranger to atomic energy. During the Second World War, the Allies and the Axis competed for an exotic new energy source -uranium. While the Manhattan Project was secretly crafting the atomic bomb in New Mexico, Japan opened uranium mines in Konan, North Korea, which now are the source of Pyongyang's nuclear energy program.
Following the Allied victory, the Soviet Union aimed to break the American nuclear monopoly by establishing a protectorate called the Republic of East Turkestan in China's northwest province of Xinjiang. The rich uranium deposits near Burjin, in the foothills of the Altai mountains, provided the fissionable material for development of Soviet nuclear capability. The hastily dug Soviet mines left behind the curse of radiation disease for the predominantly Uyghur and ethnic Kazakh inhabitants as well as to downstream communities in eastern Kazakhstan. Kazakh and Chinese scientists have since run soil remediation projects, using isotope-gathering trees to cleanse the irradiated land.
To prevent the Soviets from amassing a nuclear arsenal, the Truman administration initiated a top-secret program to control the world's entire uranium supply. Operation Murray Hill focused on sabotaging the Altai mining operations. Douglas MacKiernan, operating under the cover of US vice consul in Urumchi, organized a covert team of anticommunist Russians and Kazakh guerrillas to bomb the Soviet mining facilities. Forced to flee toward Lhasa, MacKiernan was shot dead in case of mistaken identity by a Tibetan border guard and is honored as the CIA's first agent killed in action.
The covert global operations of Operation Murray Hill are carried on today by the CIA's counter-proliferation bureau. A glimpse into its clandestine operations is provided in "Fair Game", the book and movie about Valerie Plame, the agent exposed under the Bush administration. Battles open and covert against nuclear foes have been fought as far afield as Pakistan, Egypt, Libya, Argentina, Indonesia, Myanmar and Iraq as well as against usual suspects Iran and North Korea.
Threat to the American Public
The partial meltdowns at Fukushima 1 are putting Washington into a quandary. Had these radiation releases occurred in North Korea or Iran, Washington could have summoned UN Security Council sessions, demanded IAEA inspections and imposed tough sanctions and possibly military intervention. The meltdowns, however, are from American-designed reactors operating under protocols created by the US.
The Obama administration has, therefore, downplayed the seriousness of the current nuclear drama shaking its security ally Japan. In an unconvincing defensive tone, the American president has backed nuclear energy as part of "the energy mix" supporting the US economy. His pro-nuclear stance is irrational and irresponsible, when smaller allied countries including Britain, the Netherlands and Germany are making massive investments in offshore wind farms in the North Sea to end their dependency on nuclear and fossil fuels.
The international community is well aware of the double standard in policy. The US quietly applauded Israeli air strikes against Saddam Hussein's Osirak nuclear-energy plant in 1981 and has since demanded ever-stricter sanctions against Tehran and Pyongyang. Yet Washington refuses to lead by example, shrugging off the anti-nuclear movement's pleas to stop plans for new reactors and shunning calls from the citizens of Hiroshima and Nagasaki for total nuclear disarmament. America's campaign for an atomic monopoly, or at least nuclear dominance, is driving smaller powers toward obtaining a deterrence capability. These nations aren't some "axis of evil"; they're just playing the survival game by the rules - not the words - set by Washington.
In the days and months ahead, America's own citizens will be cringing from the dreaded arrival of radioactive fallout. Terrorism is now practically forgotten when a much wider threat may soon blanket American skies from "sea to shining sea." Unless Washington moves rapidly toward repudiation of its own nuclear addiction, the specter of another Nagasaki will overshadow the land of the free and home of the brave.
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