"Radioactive elements found at crippled Japanese plant; Questions arise about nuclear facility’s status" November 03, 2011|By Hiroko Tabuchi, New York Times
TOKYO - Nuclear workers at the crippled Fukushima power plant raced to inject boric acid into the plant’s No. 2 reactor early yesterday after telltale radioactive elements were detected there, and the plant’s owner admitted for the first time that fuel deep inside three stricken plants was probably continuing to experience bursts of fission.
The unexpected bursts - something akin to flare-ups after a major fire - are unlikely to presage a large-scale nuclear reaction with the resulting large-scale production of heat and radiation. But they threaten to increase the amount of dangerous radioactive elements leaking from the complex and complicate cleanup efforts, raising startling questions about how much remains uncertain at the plant, the site of the world’s worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl. The Japanese government has said that it aims to bring the reactors to a stable state known as a “cold shutdown’’ by the end of the year.
Yesterday, the plant’s operator, the Tokyo Electric Power Co., said that measurements of gas from inside the No. 2 reactor indicated the presence of radioactive xenon and other substances that could be the byproduct of nuclear fission. The presence of xenon 135 in particular, which has a half-life of just nine hours, seemed to indicate that fission took place very recently....
The developments added to the disquiet over handling of information related to the disaster. For almost two months after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, both company and government officials said it was unlikely that meltdown had occurred at all at the Fukushima Daichi nuclear complex, before finally conceding that the fuel had indeed slumped and had likely breached containments in three reactors....
See why I no longer believe governments or their minimizing mouthpieces in the media?
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Time for the p.r. press tour!
"Japan gives journalists first tour of destroyed nuclear plant" November 13, 2011|By David Guttenfelder and Eric Talmadge, Associated Press
OKUMA, Japan - Reporters in radiation suits visited the ravaged facility yesterday for the first time since Japan’s worst tsunami in centuries swamped the plant March 11, causing reactor explosions and meltdowns and turning hundreds of square miles of countryside into a no man’s land.
Eight months later, the plant remains a shambles. Mangled trucks, flipped over by the power of the wave, still clutter its access roads. Rubble remains strewn where it fell. Pools of water cover parts of the once immaculate campus.
Tens of thousands of the plant’s former neighbors may never be able to go home. And just as Hiroshima and Nagasaki became icons of the horrors of nuclear weapons, Fukushima has become the new rallying cry of the global anti-nuclear-energy movement.
Yet this picture is one of progress, Japanese officials say. It has taken this long to make the plant stable enough to allow yesterday’s tour, which included representatives of the Japanese and international media - including the Associated Press. Officials expect to complete an early but important step toward cleaning up the accident by the end of the year.
Good Lord, what f***ing liars!!
“I think it’s remarkable that we’ve come this far,’’ Environment Minister Goshi Hosono, Japan’s chief nuclear crisis response official, said before leading the tour. “The situation at the beginning was extremely severe. At least we can say we have overcome the worst.’’
The thing is -- even now -- leaking radiation.
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Workers like Kazuo Okawa - in Chernobyl they were called “liquidators’’ - have restored the plant’s supply of electricity, set up elaborate cooling and drainage systems, rebuilt crumbled walls, and erected a huge tent to cover one of the worst-hit reactors, cutting the amount of radioactivity leaking into the surrounding environment.
Tokyo Electric Power Co., which runs the plant, says it will achieve a “cold shutdown’’ by the end of the year - a first step toward creating a stable enough environment for work to proceed on removing the reactors’ nuclear fuel and closing the plant altogether.
They will proclaim it even if it is not true.
But that is by no means the end of the story.
A preliminary government report released this month predicted it will take 30 years or more to safely decommission Fukushima Daiichi. Like Chernobyl, it will probably be encased in a concrete and steel “sarcophagus.’’
And even that may not work. They just don't know what else to do.
Hiroaki Koide, a nuclear physicist at Kyoto University, said he doubts the decommissioning process will go as smoothly as the government hopes. He said pools for spent fuel remain highly volatile, and cleaning up the three reactor cores that melted through their innermost chambers will be a massive challenge....
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Washington Post keeps the tour going:
"From farmland to wasteland; Cattle, pets roam untended near closed Fukushima plant" November 21, 2011|By Chico Harlan, Washington Post
NAMIE, Japan - Eight months ago, people left this place in haste. Families raced from their homes without closing the front doors. They left half-finished wine bottles on their kitchen tables and sneakers in their foyers. They jumped in their cars without taking pets and left cows hitched to milking stanchions.
Now the land stands empty, frozen in time, virtually untouched since the March 11 disaster that created a wasteland in the 12-mile circle of farmland that surrounds the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.
Some 78,000 people lived here; only a handful have been permitted to return. Cobwebs spread across storefronts. Mushrooms sprout from living-room floors. Weeds swallow train tracks. A few roads, shaken by the earthquake, are cantilevered like rice paddies. Near the coastline, boats borne inland by the tsunami still litter main roads.
Only the animals were left behind, and their picture is not pretty. Pigs, cats, and dogs scavenge for food. On one farm, the Tochimotos’, the skulls of 20 cows dangle from milking tethers.
Several thousand Fukushima workers, draped in white protective gear, pass daily through the front gates of the plant, site of the worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl. But beyond the plant, for at least 12 miles in any direction, the Japanese government maintains a no-entry zone, with teams of policemen sealing off all roads going in.
Nobody is allowed to live there, a condition that could continue for decades.
If the dormant Chernobyl plant in Ukraine provides any guide, the land surrounding the Fukushima facility will one day grow wild, with villages eventually bulldozed and buried. Maybe decades from now, Japan will tailor the area to tourists, or it will use the region as a wildlife preserve. For now, though, the land surrounding the nuclear plant still preserves the history of those who were told to abandon it.
The area is dangerous over long periods, with many spots even 10 miles away from the plant showing radiation levels exceeding those at the facility’s main gate. But spend a full day driving through all parts of the no-entry zone and the risks are minimal, with a total exposure comparable with that from two chest X-rays.
I think I'm going to be sick, and not because of radiation.
Only emergency workers and residents with special permits are allowed to enter the zone, and only for brief trips. When two reporters rode into the zone with a local rancher, only a few cars whizzed along the main roads. The rancher, Masami Yoshizawa, said that only about 1,000 of the area’s 3,500 cows are still alive. At one point, while driving, he spotted a few with yellow tags on their ears. “Those are probably mine,’’ he said.
Many who once lived close to the nuclear plant have felt severed from their previous lives. But Yoshizawa’s case shows an alternative torment: He makes daily visits to his contaminated farmland, preferring a dangerous reminder of his old life to no reminder at all.
Not good.
Before the nuclear accident, Yoshizawa worked at the M Ranch, a 74-acre farm. From the corral where Yoshizawa kept his cattle, one could see the towerlike stacks of Fukushima Dai-ichi, just nine miles away.
Yoshizawa and his fellow ranchers raised the cows for their prized Wagyu beef, selling them for $13,000 per head. Then, in a five-day span of meltdowns and explosions, cesium and other radioactive isotopes were swept across the countryside; the cattle were worthless, and the farm’s president, Jun Murata, lost $6.5 million in assets. On March 18, Murata told his employees that this was the end. He went to the corral and unlatched the gate. Some 230 cows wandered into the open.
Most of the employees never returned. But Yoshizawa, with no wife and children, spent the next week thinking about his livelihood. He identified in new ways with the animals he once sold for their beef; he felt as if his own worth, too, was verging on zero.
So he clung to the ranch. He obtained a permit from a friend at the local mayor’s office, allowing him unfettered access to the no-go zone. He bought a dosimeter, clipping it to the front window of his car. He - and often Murata as well - made daily trips to the ranch, feeding the cattle with contaminated hay.
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"Meltdown at nuclear plant may be deeper than thought; Simulation looks at the possible damage in Japan" December 01, 2011|By Mari Yamaguchi, Associated Press
TOKYO - Radioactive debris from melted fuel rods may have seeped deeper into the floor of a tsunami-damaged nuclear reactor in Japan than previously thought, to within a foot from breaching the crucial steel barrier, a new simulation showed yesterday.
That's AmeriKan newspeak for you were lied to, and it's already melted through the steel.
The findings will not change ongoing efforts to stabilize the reactors more than eight months after the Fukushima Daiichi plant was disabled, but another simulation released by the government-funded Japan Nuclear Energy Safety Organization indicated that the erosion of the concrete could be deeper and that possible structural damage to the reactor’s foundation needs to be studied.
Masanori Naito, a Japan Nuclear Energy Safety official, said the melting fuel rods lost their shape as they collapsed to the bottom of the vessel, then deteriorated into drops when water pumping resumed, and the fuel drops spattered and smashed against the concrete as they fell.
Tokyo Electric Power and government officials are aiming to achieve “cold shutdown’’ by the end of the year - a first step toward creating a stable enough environment for work to proceed on removing the reactors’ nuclear fuel and closing the plant altogether.
The government estimates it will take 30 years or more to safely decommission Fukushima Daiichi.
Yesterday’s simulations depict what happened early in the crisis and do not indicate a recent deterioration of the No. 1 reactor.
Oyama said, however, the results are based only on available data and may not match the actual conditions inside the reactors, which cannot be opened for years.
Some specialists have raised questions about achieving the cold shutdown....
They say the fuel is no longer there and measuring the temperature of empty cores is meaningless, while nobody knows where and how hot the melted fuel really is.
Kiyoharu Abe, a nuclear specialist at Japan Nuclear Energy Safety, said it is too early to make a conclusion and more simulations should be done to get accurate estimates.
“I don’t think the simulation today was wrong, but we should look at this from various viewpoints rather than making a conclusion from one simulation,’’ Abe said. “It’s just the beginning of a long process.’’
Like each one of my posts.
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And all that water they are spraying on it to keep it cool? Where is that going?
"Japanese plant leaks radioactive water" December 05, 2011|New York Times
TOKYO - At least 45 tons of highly radioactive water has leaked from a purification facility at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station, and some of it may have reached the Pacific Ocean, the plant’s operator said yesterday.
Yeah, we already knew that. Been a couple dilute dumps since the crisis began.
Nearly nine months after Fukushima Daiichi was ravaged by an earthquake and tsunami, the plant still poses a major environmental threat. Before the latest leak, the Fukushima accident had been responsible for the largest single release of radioactivity into the ocean, threatening wildlife and fisheries in the region, analysts said.
Would you want to eat anything out of that ocean?
The new radioactive water leak called into question the progress that the plant’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co., appeared to have made in stabilizing its reactors....
Not really because we no longer believed them.
Yesterday morning, workers found that radioactive water was flooding a catchment next to a purification device; the device was switched off, and the leak appeared to stop. But the company said it later discovered that leaked water was escaping through a crack in the catchment’s concrete wall and was reaching an external gutter.
In all, as much as 220 tons of water may now have leaked, according to a report in the newspaper Asahi Shimbun that cited power company officials.
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And it is not only in the water:
"Traces of radiation found in Japanese baby formula" December 07, 2011|By Yuri Kageyama, Associated Press
TOKYO - Traces of radiation spilled from Japan’s hobbled nuclear plant were detected in baby formula yesterday in the nation’s latest case of contaminated food.
Major food and candy maker Meiji Co. said it was recalling canned powdered milk for infants, with expiration dates of October 2012, as a precaution.
The levels of radioactive cesium were well below government-set safety limits, and the company said the amounts were low enough not to affect babies’ health even if they drank the formula every day.
Do they seriously expect us to believe them, or.... ??????
Specialists say children are more at risk than are adults of getting cancer and other illnesses from radiation exposure.
“There is no problem because the levels are within the government limit,’’ Kazuhiko Tsurumi, a Health Ministry official in charge of food safety, said of the radiation in Meiji milk.
The March 11 earthquake and tsunami in northeastern Japan sent three reactors into meltdown at Fukushima Daiichi plant, which have been spewing radiation into the air and ocean.
Some of that radiation has crept into food, such as rice, fish, and beef. But this was the first time radiation was reported in baby formula....
Or the first time you were told.
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"Radioactive water leaks inside Japan plant" December 10, 2011|Yuri Kageyama, Associated Press
Radioactive water leaked inside a nuclear power plant in southwestern Japan but did not escape into the environment, the government said Saturday, the latest problem for the country’s nuclear industry amid an ongoing crisis at another plant....
What?
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"Japan asserts nuclear crisis under control; Doubts persist on safety amid radiation leaks" December 17, 2011|By Hiroko Tabuchi, New York Times
TOKYO - Japan’s prime minister has declared an end to the world’s worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl, saying technicians have regained control of reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant.
“Today, we have reached a great milestone,’’ Yoshihiko Noda said in a televised address to the nation. “The reactors are stable, which should resolve one big cause of concern for us all.’’
(Blog editor is astonished at the brazen lie)
The declaration - which comes nine months after a calamitous earthquake and tsunami destroyed the seaside plant, triggering a huge radiation leak - could set the stage for the return of some evacuees to affected areas.
They are not seriously considering sending people back in there.
The government will now focus on removing the fuel stored at the site, opening up the ravaged reactors themselves, and eventually dismantling the plant, a process that is expected to take at least four decades, Noda said.
But for many of the people of Fukushima, the crisis is far from over. More than 160,000 people remain displaced, and even as the government lifts evacuation orders for some communities, many are refusing to return home.
“This does not ring true for us at all,’’ said Hirofumi Onuma, 52, deputy principal of a high school in Minamisoma, which was evacuated after the disaster. After a desperate cleanup effort, the school was declared safe and reopened at the end of October. Still, only 350 of 705 students have returned.
You can fool some of the people some of the time....
“The plant is like a black box, and we don’t know what is really happening,’’ Onuma said. “I feel no relief.’’
No one does.
The nuclear crisis led to soul searching in a nation already worn down by two lost decades of economic growth, a rapidly aging and now shrinking population, and political paralysis.
Blame for the accident has been laid on a confluence of many factors: a once-in-a-millennium tsunami, a site vulnerable to seismic disasters, a response that fell short, and cozy ties between nuclear operators and those tasked to oversee them.
Many specialists still doubt the government’s assertion that the plant is now in a stable state and worry that officials are declaring victory only to quell public anger over the accident.
It's not only the Japanese; most citizens of the world feel that way about their governments -- including this one.
The announcement yesterday of the equivalent of a “cold shutdown,’’ a technical term that means a reactor’s cooling system operates below 200 degrees Fahrenheit, assumes that the reactors are intact, said Hiroaki Koide, assistant professor at the Research Reactor Institute at Kyoto University and a prominent nuclear critic.
The plant’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co., has acknowledged that the uranium fuel in three reactors has probably melted through their containments. Some specialists, including Koide, suspect the fuel could be threatening ground water.
Something I said months ago; I guess you just got official confirmation.
Specialists have also expressed concern over signs of sporadic “recriticality’’ of the fuel, a phenomenon in which nuclear fission resumes in melted nuclear fuel lying on the floor of a storage pool or reactor core. Tokyo Electric, however, has said any fission is not likely to be self-sustaining. The plant continues to leak radiation. And water used to cool the reactors is still building up at the plant, forcing officials to consider releasing contaminated water into the ocean.
Already done it a couple of times.
“There is absolutely no cold shutdown,’’ Koide said. “It is a term that has been trotted out to give the impression we are reaching some sort of closure.
In other words, YOU RE BEING LIED TO YET AGAIN by GOVERNMENT and INDUSTRY!!
“We still face a long battle of epic proportions, and by the time it is really over, most of us will be long dead,’’ he added.
Either by the radiation or age.
But Goshi Hosono, minister of state for nuclear power policy, said that recovery work at the plant had progressed enough that any further debacles could be averted.
“We may still face various troubles, but the plant is now stable enough to overcome them,’’ he said.
This really is sickening, and not because of radiation.
Only eight of the nation’s 54 reactors are operating, as local communities resist the restarting of reactors closed for maintenance or inspection since the March disaster.
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Even the Globe admits it is a global concern now.
Related:
"The location and conditions of the melted fuel is not exactly known....
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You won't find that at the link, but believe me, I'm staring at the print.
And now it is up to a 40-year clean-up, 'eh?
You probably just want to get away from it all, huh?
"Deluxe-car trek in Japan ends in $1m pileup" December 06, 2011|Bloomberg News
TOKYO - Eight Ferraris and a Lamborghini were part of a 14-car crash in Japan that wrecked more than $1 million worth of vehicles.
The accident Sunday morning on the rain-soaked Chugoku Expressway, in Yamaguchi Prefecture at the western tip of Japan’s main island of Honshu, also involved three Mercedes-Benz vehicles and two Toyotas, police said.
No fatalities were reported and 10 people sustained minor injuries.
The luxury cars were being driven by a group of automobile enthusiasts from Kyushu to Hiroshima, authorities said....
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This test drive almost went the distance.
