Fukushima and the Japan Tsunami: Neverending Disasters (3 articles)

Tuesday, May 29, 2012 by Common Dreams 
Fukushima Radiation Found in Tuna Off California
 

Detectable amounts of cesium-137 and cesium-134 were found in bluefin tuna caught off the coast of California about four months after the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan, US scientists reported on Monday.

The timing is important because it shows that migrating fish carried radiation much further and faster than either wind or ocean currents. In addition, of course, the bluefin are a highly prized edible fish found in sushi restaurants all over the world.

Without making a definitive judgment on the safety of the fish, lead author Daniel Madigan of Stanford University's Hopkins Marine Station told Reuters that the amount of radioactive material detected was far less than the Japanese safety limit. 
 
"I wouldn't tell anyone what's safe to eat or what's not safe to eat," she said. "It's become clear that some people feel that any amount of radioactivity, in their minds, is bad and they'd like to avoid it."

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Reuters reports:

There was about five times the background amount of cesium 137 in the bluefin tuna they tested, but that is still a tiny quantity, Madigan said: 5 becquerels instead of 1 becquerel. (It takes 37 billion becquerels to equal 1 curie; for context, a pound of uranium-238 has 0.00015 curies of radioactivity, so one becquerel would be a truly miniscule proportion.)

The researchers figured that the elevated levels of cesium 137 and all of the cesium 134 they detected came from Fukushima because of the way bluefin tuna migrate across the Pacific.

Bluefin tuna spawn only in the western Pacific, off the coasts of Japan and the Philippines. As young fish, some migrate east to the California coast, where upwelling ocean water brings lots of food for them and their prey. They get to these waters as juveniles or adolescents, and remain there, fattening up.

Judging by the size of the bluefin tuna they sampled - they averaged about 15 pounds (6 kg) - the researchers knew these were young fish that had left Japanese water about a month after the accident.

Most of the radiation was released over a few days in April 2011, and unlike some other compounds, radioactive cesium does not quickly sink to the sea bottom but remains dispersed in the water column, from the surface to the ocean floor.

Fish can swim right through it, ingesting it through their gills, by taking in seawater or by eating organisms that have already taken it in, Madigan said.

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The Guardian adds:

The results "are unequivocal. Fukushima was the source", said Ken Buesseler of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, who played no part in the research.
Japan's chief cabinet secretary, Osamu Fujimura, conceded that the findings suggested the monitoring of radiation levels in fish outside Japanese waters may have to be stepped up. [...]

"We were frankly kind of startled," said Nicholas Fisher, an expert at Stony Brook University in New York who took part in the study. "That's a big ocean. To swim across it and still retain these radionuclides is pretty amazing."

The operator of the Fukushima Daiichi plant, Tokyo Electric Power, estimates that 18,000 terabecquerels of radioactive materials flowed into the Pacific after the accident, either in the form of fallout, or through mixing with water that leaked from the facility. A terabecquerel is equal to 1tn becquerels.

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Monday, May 28, 2012 by Common Dreams
Growing Fear Over Fukushima Fuel Pool 4 as Wall Bulge Detected
TEPCO admits a bulge detected in the walls of Unit 4, stoking fears over the building’s stability

A new bulge in the walls of the Fukushima Unit 4 nuclear plant has driven growing new fears over in Japan.

The No. 4 reactor building at Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant in Okuma, Fukushima Prefecture, Japan, Saturday, May 26, 2012. New concerns have risen after its operator reported a bulging of the building's wall. (Toshiaki Shimizu/Japan Pool) [Yellow reactor containment dome at left background.] Attention has focused on Unit 4’s spent fuel pool because of the large number of assemblies filled with rods that are stored high above the ground at that severly damaged reactor building. Three other reactor buildings at the site are also badly damaged, but their pools hold fewer used assemblies.

On Saturday Japan’s government sent Environment and Nuclear Minister Goshi Hosonoto to inspect Unit 4.

Mr Hosono said the government accepted the Tokyo Electric Power Company's assurances that reinforcement work had shored up the building.

But many Japanese have scoffed at such assurances and point out that the pool's cooling system has malfunctioned several times.

''The No. 4 reactor is visibly damaged and in a fragile state, down to the floor that holds the spent fuel pool,'' said Hiroaki Koide, an assistant professor at Kyoto University's Research Reactor Institute. ''Any radioactive release could be huge and go directly into the environment.''

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The New York Times reports:

What passes for normal at the Fukushima Daiichi plant today would have caused shudders among even the most sanguine of experts before an earthquake and tsunami set off the world’s second most serious nuclear crisis after Chernobyl.

Fourteen months after the accident, a pool brimming with used fuel rods and filled with vast quantities of radioactive cesium still sits on the top floor of a heavily damaged reactor building, covered only with plastic.

The public’s fears about the pool have grown in recent months as some scientists have warned that it has the most potential for setting off a new catastrophe, now that the three nuclear reactors that suffered meltdowns are in a more stable state, and as frequent quakes continue to rattle the region.

Senator Wyden, whose state could lie in the path of any new radioactive plumes, is among those pushing for faster action. After his recent visit to the ravaged plant, he said the pool at No. 4 poses “an extraordinary and continuing risk” and the retrieval of spent fuel “should be a priority, given the possibility of further earthquakes.”The worries picked up new traction in recent days after the operator of the plant, Tokyo Electric Power Company, or Tepco, said it had found a slight bulge in one of the walls of the reactor building, stoking fears over the building’s safety.

To try to quell such worries, the government sent the environment and nuclear minister to the plant on Saturday, where he climbed a makeshift staircase in protective garb to look at the structure supporting the pool, which he said appeared sound. The minister, Goshi Hosono, added that although the government accepted Tepco’s assurances that reinforcement work had shored up the building, it ordered the company to conduct further studies because of the bulge. [...]

“The No. 4 reactor is visibly damaged and in a fragile state, down to the floor that holds the spent fuel pool,” said Hiroaki Koide, an assistant professor at Kyoto University’s Research Reactor Institute and one of the experts raising concerns. “Any radioactive release could be huge and go directly into the environment.”

Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, expressed similar concerns during a trip to Japan last month.

The fears over the pool at Reactor No. 4 are helping to undermine assurances by Tepco and the Japanese government that the Fukushima plant has been stabilized, and are highlighting how complicated the cleanup of the site, expected to take decades, will be. The concerns are also raising questions about whether Japan’s all-out effort to convince its citizens that nuclear power is safe kept the authorities from exploring other — and some say safer — options for storing used fuel rods.

“It was taboo to raise questions about the spent fuel that was piling up,” said Hideo Kimura, who worked as a nuclear fuel engineer at the Fukushima Daiichi plant in the 1990s. “But it was clear that there was nowhere for the spent fuel to go.”

The worst-case situations for Reactor No. 4 would be for the pool to run dry if there is another problem with the cooling system and the rods catch fire, releasing enormous amounts of radioactive material, or for fission to restart if the metal panels that separate the rods are knocked over in a quake. That would be especially bad because the pool, unlike reactors, lacks containment vessels to hold in radioactive materials. (Even the roof that used to exist would be no match if the rods caught fire, for instance.)

Senator Wyden, whose state could lie in the path of any new radioactive plumes and who has studied nuclear waste issues, is among those pushing for faster action. After his recent visit to the ravaged plant, he said the pool at No. 4 poses “an extraordinary and continuing risk” and the retrieval of spent fuel “should be a priority, given the possibility of further earthquakes.”

Attention has focused on No. 4’s spent fuel pool because of the large number of assemblies filled with rods that are stored at that reactor building. Three other reactor buildings at the site are also badly damaged, but their pools hold fewer used assemblies.

According to Tepco, the pool at the No. 4 reactor, which was not operating at the time of the accident, holds 1,331 spent fuel assemblies, which each contain dozens of rods. Several thousand rods were removed from the core just three months before so the vessel could be inspected. Those rods, which were not fully used up, could more easily support chain reactions than the fully spent fuel.

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The damaged No. 4 reactor building stands at Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant in Okuma, Fukushima prefecture, Japan, Saturday, May 26, 2012. Japanese Environment and Nuclear Minister Goshi Hosono, accompanied by the media, has visited the crippled Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant to inspect a reactor building and its spent fuel pool at the center of safety concerns. (Tomohiro Ohsumi, Pool)

 

Goshi Hosono, Japan's environment and nuclear minister, third from left, wearing a red helmet, along with members of the media, walks on the No. 4 reactor building at Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s (TEPCO) Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant in Okuma, Fukushima prefecture, Japan, Saturday, May 26, 2012. Japan's environment and nuclear minister Hosono visited the tsunami-crippled nuclear power plant Saturday to inspect a spent fuel pool at the center of safety concerns. [Yellow reactor containment dome at left background.] (Tomohiro Ohsumi, Pool)

 

Workers walk in front of the No. 4 reactor building at Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s tsunami-crippled Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear power plant in Okuma town, Fukushima prefecture, Japan, Saturday, May 26, 2012. (Tomohiro Ohsumi, Pool)

 

Japan's Environment and Nuclear Minister Goshi Hosono, second from left, inspects a pool containing spent fuel rods inside the No. 4 reactor building at Tokyo Electric Power Co. 's tsunami-crippled Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant in Okuma, Fukushima Prefecture, Japan, Saturday, May 26, 2012. The pool, located at the top of the building above the reactor, remains one of the plant's biggest risks due to its vulnerability to earthquakes. (Toshiaki Shimizu, Japan Pool)

 

A pool for spent fuel rods is seen inside the No. 4 reactor building of Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s tsunami-crippled Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant in Okuma, Fukushima prefecture, Japan, Saturday, May 26, 2012. The pool, located at the top of the building above the reactor, remains one of the plant's biggest risks due to its vulnerability to earthquakes. (Toshiaki Shimizu, Japan Pool)

 

Goshi Hosono, Japan's environment and nuclear minister, inspects the No. 4 reactor building at Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant in Okuma, Fukushima Prefecture, Japan, Saturday, May 26, 2012. The visit by Hosono, apparently aimed at demonstrating the safety of the facility, came amid renewed concerns about conditions at the plant's No. 4 reactor after its operator reported a bulging of the building's wall. (Toshiaki Shimizu, Japan Pool) [Yellow reactor containment dome at center background.]

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Monday, May 28, 2012 by Common Dreams
Japan's Toxic Tsunami Debris Heads Towards North America
Chris Pallister of the Gulf of Alaska Keeper Organization: "This is more hazardous than oil"

As the heavier debris from the March 2011 tsunami that struck Japan makes its way across the Pacific Ocean, scientists warn of the ecological threat of toxic, chemical debris headed towards North America's western coast.

Chemical contamination "could be a real threat," Dr. M. Sanjayan, the lead scientist at conservation group the Nature Conservancy, tells CBC News. (screenshot from CNN video below) Chemical contamination "could be a real threat," Dr. M. Sanjayan, the lead scientist at conservation group the Nature Conservancy, tells CBC News. "Finding one drum of, say, paint thinner, or something you might find in your garage, it's not hugely toxic. But if you find 50 of them all washed up on a rocky shore and then breaking and leaking, then you have some problems."

"This is more hazardous than oil," Chris Pallister of the Gulf of Alaska Keeper Organization warns the Homer Tribune. "Entire communities went into the ocean — industrial, household chemicals, anything you can think of in your garage — and it's all coming here. This is like a great big toxic spill that is widely dispersed."

Chris Pallister, who's been cleaning marine debris on Alaska's Montague Island for 15 years, told CNN, "The influx of tsunami debris really concerns us mostly because of the amount of Styrofoam that's coming with it and also the toxic chemicals that are coming. We think they're going to have a really detrimental impact on the environment out here long term."

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CBC News: Chemicals in tsunami debris could pose coastal threat

The spill and spread of industrial chemicals across the coastline of British Columbia is a possibility as slower-moving tsunami debris from Japan approaches the west coast, according to experts observing its movements.

The risk of chemical contamination is sizable, especially considering that many of the tsunami-affected areas on the Japanese coast were industrial and used many different types of toxic chemicals in manufacturing operations.

"[Chemical contamination] could be a real threat," said Dr. M. Sanjayan, the lead scientist at conservation group the Nature Conservancy. "For example, it's very hard to imagine how 50 drums [filled] with something could all show up at the same time, unless it's an event like this. That's where it can be a little dangerous. [...]

Dianna Parker of the NOAA notes that the majority of the debris is heavier and slower-moving than the more buoyant items that have been found on coastlines in recent months. Objects that ride high, such as plastic containers, bottles and buoys, travel much faster than intact and possibly dangerous industrial chemical containers. The bulk of the debris pulled out to sea by the tsunami is still suspended north of the main Hawaiian Islands in the Pacific. [...]

The Nature Conservancy and the NOAA believe that publicity surrounding the debris field will bring attention to the fact that ocean-going debris from the tsunami merely added to an ever-growing pile of junk accumulating in the Pacific and on shorelines. The estimated five million tonnes of debris from the Japanese tsunami represents less than one per cent of what's already out there in the Pacific.

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NOAA map as of May 15, 2012 of tsunami debris

Mother Nature Network: Japan tsunami debris looms off U.S. coasts

The Pacific Ocean is no stranger to litter, thanks to a big maritime mess known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. But for the past 14 months, a different type of debris has been sailing around the Pacific — not the familiar bits of plastic found in the garbage patch, but some 5 million tons of detritus that washed offshore after the deadly Japanese earthquake and tsunami of March 2011. [...]

While it pales in comparison to the disaster that sent it there, some worry all this debris could pose environmental dangers for the U.S. and Canada, possibly even on par with an oil spill. "This is more hazardous than oil," Chris Pallister of the Gulf of Alaska Keeper Organization tells the Homer Tribune. "Entire communities went into the ocean — industrial, household chemicals, anything you can think of in your garage — and it's all coming here. This is like a great big toxic spill that is widely dispersed." [...]

Nonetheless, many people from Alaska to California say tsunami debris is already flooding in, and they want immediate action. "The time for talk is over," Sen. Mark Begich, D-Alaska, said in a recent statement. "The prospect of debris coming to our shorelines is not just a theory, it is here." Begich and other lawmakers have pushed the Obama administration to allocate emergency funds to study the tsunami debris, and to reconsider a planned budget cut for NOAA's Marine Debris Program.

Fukushima Daiichi Reactors Were in Meltdown After Earthquake, But Before Tsunami

TEPCO's Darkest Secret 
By DAVID McNEILL and JAKE ADELSTEIN

It is one of the mysteries of Japan’s ongoing nuclear crisis: How much damage did the March 11 earthquake do to the Fukushima Daiichi reactors before the tsunami hit?  The stakes are high: If the quake structurally compromised the plant and the safety of its nuclear fuel, then every other similar reactor in Japan will have to be reviewed and possibly shut down.  With virtually all of Japan’s 54 reactors either offline or scheduled for shutdown by next April, the issue of structural safety looms over the decision to restart every one in the months and years after.

The key question for operator Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) and its regulators to answer is this: How much damage was inflicted on the Daiichi plant before the first tsunami reached the plant roughly 40 minutes after the earthquake?  TEPCO and the Japanese government are hardly reliable adjudicators in this controversy. “There has been no meltdown,” top government spokesman Edano Yukio famously repeated in the days after March 11.  “It was an unforeseeable disaster,” Tepco’s then President Shimizu Masataka improbably said later.  As we now know, meltdown was already occurring even as Edano spoke.  And far from being unforeseeable, the disaster had been repeatedly forewarned.

Throughout the months of lies and misinformation, one story has stuck: “The earthquake knocked out the plant’s electric power, halting cooling to its six reactors.  The tsunami – a unique, one-off event - then washed out the plant’s back-up generators, shutting down all cooling and starting the chain of events that would cause the world’s first triple meltdown.  That line has now become gospel at TEPCO. “We had no idea that a tsunami was coming,” said Murata Yasuki, head of public relations for the now ruined facility.  “It came completely out of the blue” (nemimi ni mizu datta).  Safety checks have since focused heavily on future damage from tsunamis.But what if recirculation pipes and cooling pipes burst, snapped, leaked, and broke completely after the earthquake -- before the tidal wave reached the facilities and before the electricity went out? This would surprise few people familiar with the nearly 40-year-old reactor one, the grandfather of the nuclear reactors still operating in Japan.

Problems with the fractured, deteriorating, poorly repaired pipes and the cooling system had been pointed out for years. In 2002, whistleblower allegations that TEPCO had deliberately falsified safety records came to light and the company was forced to shut down all of its reactors and inspect them, including the Fukushima Daiichi Power Plant.  Sugaoka Kei, a General Electric on-site inspector first notified Japan’s nuclear watchdog, Nuclear Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) in June of 2000.  The government of Japan took two years to address the problem, then colluded in covering it up -- and gave the name of the whistleblower to TEPCO.

In September 2002, TEPCO admitted covering up data about cracks in critical circulation pipes in addition to previously revealed falsifications. In their analysis of the cover-up, The Citizen’s Nuclear Information Center writes:

“The records that were covered up had to do with cracks in parts of the reactor known as recirculation pipes.  These pipes are there to siphon off heat from the reactor. If these pipes were to fracture, it would result in a serious accident in which coolant leaks out. From the perspective of safety, these are highly important pieces of equipment. Cracks were found in the Fukushima Daiichi Power Plant, reactor one, reactor two, reactor three, reactor four, reactor five.”

The cracks in the pipes were not due to earthquake damage; they came from the simple wear and tear of long-term usage.  On March 2, 2011, nine days before the meltdown, the Nuclear Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) warned TEPCO of its failure to inspect critical pieces of plant equipment, including the recirculation pumps. TEPCO was ordered to make the inspections, perform repairs if needed and report to NISA on June 2nd. It does not appear that the report has been filed as of this time.

The problems were not only with the piping. Gas tanks at the site also exploded after the earthquake. The outside of the reactor building suffered structural damage. There was no one really qualified to assess the radioactive leakage because, as NISA admits, after the accident all the on-site inspectors fled.  And the quake and tsunami broke most of the monitoring equipment so there was little information available on radiation afterwards.

The authors have spoken to several workers at the plant. Each recites the same story: Serious damage to piping and at least one of the reactors before the tsunami hit. All have requested anonymity because they are still working at or connected with the stricken plant.  Worker A, a 27-year-old maintenance engineer who was at the Fukushima complex on March 11, recalls hissing, leaking pipes.

“I personally saw pipes that had come apart and I assume that there were many more that had been broken throughout the plant.  There’s no doubt that the earthquake did a lot of damage inside the plant. There were definitely leaking pipes, but we don’t know which pipes – that has to be investigated. I also saw that part of the wall of the turbine building for reactor one had come away.  That crack might have affected the reactor.” 

The walls of the reactor are quite fragile, he notes.

“If the walls are too rigid, they can crack under the slightest pressure from inside so they have to be breakable because if the pressure is kept inside and there is a buildup of pressure, it can damage the equipment inside the walls. So it needs to be allowed to escape.  It’s designed to give during a crisis, if not it could be worse – that might be shocking to others, but to us it’s common sense.”

WORKER B, a technician in his late thirties who was also on site at the time of the earthquake recalls what happened.

“It felt like the earthquake hit in two waves, the first impact was so intense you could see the building shaping, the pipes buckling, and within minutes, I saw pipes bursting. Some fell off the wall. Others snapped. I’m pretty sure that some of the oxygen tanks stored on site had exploded but I didn’t see for myself.  Someone yelled that we all needed to evacuate. I was severely alarmed because as I was leaving I was told, and I could see, that several pipes had cracked open, including what I believe were cold water supply pipes. That would mean that coolant couldn’t get to the reactor core. If you can’t get sufficient coolant to the core, it melts down. You don’t have to be a nuclear scientist to figure that out.”

As he was heading to his car, he could see that the walls of the reactor one building itself had already started to collapse. “There were holes in them. In the first few minutes, no one was thinking about a tsunami. We were thinking about survival.”

Worker C was coming into work late when the earthquake hit.

“I was in a building nearby when the earthquake shook. After the second shockwave hit, I heard a loud explosion. I looked out the window and I could see white smoke coming from reactor one. I thought to myself, ‘this is the end.’”

When the worker got to the office five to fifteen minutes later the supervisor immediately ordered everyone to evacuate, explaining, “there’s been an explosion of some gas tanks in reactor one, probably the oxygen tanks. In addition to this there has been some structural damage, pipes have burst, meltdown is possible. Please take shelter immediately.” (It should be noted that several explosions occurred at Daiichi even after the March 11th earthquake, one of which TEPCO stated, “was probably due to a gas tank left behind in the debris”.)

As the employees prepared to leave, the tsunami warning came. Many of them fled to the top floor of a building near the site and waited to be rescued.

The suspicion that the quake caused severe damage to the reactors is strengthened by reports that radiation leaked from the plant minutes later.  Bloomberg has reported that a radiation alarm went off at the plant before the tsunami hit on March 11.  The news agency says that one of the few monitoring posts left working, on the perimeter of the plant “about 1.5 kilometers (1 mile) from the No. 1 reactor went off at 3:29 p.m., minutes before the station was overwhelmed by the tsunami.”

The reason for official reluctance to admit that the earthquake did direct structural damage to reactor one is obvious.   Onda Katsunobu, author of TEPCO: The Dark Empire who sounded the alarm about the firm in his book (2007) explains it this way:

“If TEPCO and the government of Japan admit an earthquake can do direct damage to the reactor, this raises suspicions about the safety of every reactor they run. They are using a number of antiquated reactors that have the same systemic problems, the same wear and tear on the piping.”  

Kikuchi Yoichi, a former GE engineer who helped build the Fukushima nuclear power plant says unequivocally that, "the earthquake caused the meltdown not the tsunami.”  In his recent book Why I’m Against the Nuclear Plants I Helped Build), he explains that poorly maintained water pipes and circulation system failure were the cause of the triple meltdown. Kikuchi in his book writes (p. 51)

 “At Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, at first the plan was to use the water coffin approach. In other words, to fill the containment vessels with water and cool down the pressure vessel and ensure a safe and stable state. However, once (TEPCO) understood that the containment vessels  had been damaged, they gave up this plan. Because water was probably leaking all over the place from the pipes, from the start this was an unreasonable scenario.”

Tanaka Mitsuhiko, a former nuclear power plant designer and science writer asserts that at least the Number One reactor melted down as a result of the earthquake damage.  He describes it as a loss of coolant accident (LOCA).

"The data that TEPCO has made public shows a huge loss of coolant within the first few hours of the earthquake. It can't be accounted for by the loss of electrical power. There was already so much damage to the cooling system that a meltdown was inevitable long before the tsunami arrived."

He says the released data shows that at 14:52 on March 11, before the tsunami had arrived, the emergency circulation equipment of both the A and B systems automatically started up. "This only happens when there is a loss of coolant."  Between 15:04 and 15:11 the water sprayer inside the containment vessel was turned on. Tanaka says that it is an emergency measure only done when other cooling systems have failed.

By the time the tsunami arrived and knocked out all the electrical systems, circa 15:37, the plant was already on its way to melting down.

Tanaka believes that a fault in the Mark I reactor, the same type as the number one reactor, was another contributing factor to the meltdown. On November 5, 1987, NISA began an evaluation of the Mark 1 reactors to consider how much stress they could take before a LOCA would occur. The results of that evaluation have not been made public.

There are currently ten remaining Mark type reactors in Japan, according to Tanaka's research. He believes that each one is the equivalent of a ticking time bomb. 

Sugaoka Kei, who conducted on-sight inspections at the Fukushima plant, was the man who first blew the whistle on TEPCO’s data tampering with critical machinery. He says that he wasn’t surprised that a meltdown took place after the earthquake. He sent the Japanese government a letter dated June 28, 2000 warning them of the problems there. It took the Japanese government almost two years to act on that warning.

Sugaoka asserts in his letter that TEPCO left in place and continued to operate a severely damaged steam dryer in the plant even ten years after he pointed out the problem. The steam dryer had never been properly installed and was 180 degrees out of place. Sugaoka states, “It wasn’t a surprise that a nuclear accident happened there. I always thought it was just a matter of time. This is one of those times in my life when I’m not happy I was right.”

Worker A says there were “probably pieces of equipment on site that had never been checked.”

“Let’s say you have a refrigerator – the manufacturer recommends it be checked every ten years.  But it’s surrounded by many other kinds of equipment in the plant, all with different requirements for checking.  So if the refrigerator check is missed, it will be another 10 years before it is done.  Sometimes checks might not happen for decades.  In a strong earthquake, that equipment could fail.  That’s TEPCO’s responsibility. They’re supposed to make the schedule.” 

Onda Katsunobu says,

“I’ve spent decades researching TEPCO and its nuclear power plants and what I’ve found, and what government reports confirm, is that the nuclear reactors are only as strong as their weakest links, and those links are the pipes.”

During his research, Onda spoke with several engineers who worked at the TEPCO plants. One told him that often piping would not match up the way it should according to the blueprints. 

In that case, the only solution was to use heavy machinery to pull the pipes close enough together to weld them shut. Inspection of piping was often cursory and the backs of the pipes, which were hard to reach, were often ignored.  Since the inspections themselves were generally cursory and done by visual checks, it was easy to ignore them. Repair jobs were rushed; no one wanted to be exposed to nuclear radiation longer than necessary.

Onda adds, “When I first visited the Fukushima Power Plant it was a web of pipes. Pipes on the wall, on the ceiling, on the ground. You’d have to walk over them, duck under them—sometimes you’d bump your head on them. It was like a maze of pipes inside.”

It’s not very difficult to explain what happened at reactor one and perhaps the other reactors as well, Onda believes.

“The pipes, which regulate the heat of the reactor and carry coolant are the veins and arteries of a nuclear power plant; the core is the heart. If the pipes burst, vital components don’t reach the heart and thus you have a heart attack, in nuclear terms: meltdown. In simpler terms, you can’t cool a reactor core if the pipes carrying the coolant and regulating the heat rupture—it doesn’t get to the core.”

Hasuike Touru, a TEPCO employee from 1977 until 2009 and former general safety manager of the Fukushima plant, also says:

“The emergency plans for a nuclear disaster at the Fukushima plant had no mention of using sea-water to cool the core. To pump seawater into the core is to destroy the reactor. The only reason you’d do that is that no other water or coolant was available.”

Before dawn on the 12th, the water levels at the reactor began to plummet and the radiation began rising. Meltdown was taking place. The TEPCO Press release on March 12 just after 4 a.m. states: “The pressure within the containment vessel is high but stable.” There was one note buried in the release that many people missed. “The emergency water circulation system was cooling the steam within the core; it has ceased to function.”

According to the daily Chunichi Shinbun and other sources, a few hours after the earthquake, extremely high levels of radiation were recorded within the reactor one building. The level of contamination was so high that a single day exposed to it would be fatal. The water levels of the reactor were already sinking. 6 hours and 20 minutes after the earthquake on March 11th at 9:08 the radiation level was 0.8 mSv every ten seconds. In other words, if you spent 20 minutes exposed to those radiation levels you would exceed the five-year limit for a nuclear reactor worker in Japan.

At 9:51 pm, under CEO orders, the inside of the reactor building was declared a no-entry zone.  Around 11 pm, radiation levels for the inside of the turbine building, which was next door to the reactor reached levels of 0.5 to 1.2 mSv per hour.

The meltdown was already underway.

Oddly enough, while TEPCO later insisted that the cause of the meltdown was the tsunami knocking out emergency power systems, at the 7:47 pm TEPCO press conference the same day, the spokesman, in response to questions from the press about the cooling systems, stated that the emergency water circulation equipment and reactor core isolation time cooling systems would work even without electricity.  The emergency water circulation system (IC) did in fact start working before the power loss and continue working after the power was lost as well.

Sometime between 4 and 6 am, on May 12, Yoshida Masao, the plant manager decided it was time to pump seawater into the reactor core and notified TEPCO. Seawater was not pumped in until hours after a hydrogen explosion occurred, roughly 8:00 pm that day. By then, it was probably already too late.

On May 15, TEPCO went some way toward admitting at least some of these claims in a report called “Reactor Core Status of Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station Unit One.”  The report said there was pre-tsunami damage to key facilities including pipes.  “This means that assurances from the industry in Japan and overseas that the reactors were robust is now blown apart,” said Shaun Burnie, an independent nuclear waste consultant. “It raises fundamental questions on all reactors in high seismic risk areas.”

As Burnie points out, TEPCO also admitted massive fuel melt --16 hours after loss of coolant, and 7-8 hours before the explosion in unit 1.  “Since they must have known all this -- their decision to flood with massive water volumes would guarantee massive additional contamination - including leaks to the ocean.”

No one knows exactly how much damage was done to the plant by the quake, or if this damage alone would account for the meltdown. However, eyewitness testimony and TEPCO’S own data indicates that the damage was significant. All of this despite the fact that shaking experienced at the plant during the quake was within it’s approved design specifications. Says Hasuike:

“What really happened at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant to cause a meltdown? 

TEPCO (Tokyo Electric Power Company) and the government of Japan have provided many explanations. They don’t make sense. The one thing they haven’t provided is the truth. It’s time that they did.”

Fukushima: It's Much Worse Than You Think

Thursday, June 16, 2011 by Al-Jazeera-English
Scientific experts believe Japan's nuclear disaster to be far worse than governments are revealing to the public.
by Dahr Jamail

"Fukushima is the biggest industrial catastrophe in the history of mankind," Arnold Gundersen, a former nuclear industry senior vice president, told Al Jazeera.

 Japan's 9.0 earthquake on March 11 caused a massive tsunami that crippled the cooling systems at the Tokyo Electric Power Company's (TEPCO) nuclear plant in Fukushima, Japan. It also lead to hydrogen explosions and reactor meltdowns that forced evacuations of those living within a 20km radius of the plant.

Gundersen, a licensed reactor operator with 39 years of nuclear power engineering experience, managing and coordinating projects at 70 nuclear power plants around the US, says the Fukushima nuclear plant likely has more exposed reactor cores than commonly believed.

"Fukushima has three nuclear reactors exposed and four fuel cores exposed," he said, "You probably have the equivalent of 20 nuclear reactor cores because of the fuel cores, and they are all in desperate need of being cooled, and there is no means to cool them effectively."

TEPCO has been spraying water on several of the reactors and fuel cores, but this has led to even greater problems, such as radiation being emitted into the air in steam and evaporated sea water - as well as generating hundreds of thousands of tons of highly radioactive sea water that has to be disposed of.

"The problem is how to keep it cool," says Gundersen. "They are pouring in water and the question is what are they going to do with the waste that comes out of that system, because it is going to contain plutonium and uranium. Where do you put the water?"

Even though the plant is now shut down, fission products such as uranium continue to generate heat, and therefore require cooling.

"The fuels are now a molten blob at the bottom of the reactor," Gundersen added. "TEPCO announced they had a melt through. A melt down is when the fuel collapses to the bottom of the reactor, and a melt through means it has melted through some layers. That blob is incredibly radioactive, and now you have water on top of it. The water picks up enormous amounts of radiation, so you add more water and you are generating hundreds of thousands of tons of highly radioactive water."

Independent scientists have been monitoring the locations of radioactive "hot spots" around Japan, and their findings are disconcerting.

"We have 20 nuclear cores exposed, the fuel pools have several cores each, that is 20 times the potential to be released than Chernobyl," said Gundersen. "The data I'm seeing shows that we are finding hot spots further away than we had from Chernobyl, and the amount of radiation in many of them was the amount that caused areas to be declared no-man's-land for Chernobyl. We are seeing square kilometres being found 60 to 70 kilometres away from the reactor. You can't clean all this up. We still have radioactive wild boar in Germany, 30 years after Chernobyl."

Radiation monitors for children

Japan's Nuclear Emergency Response Headquarters finally admitted earlier this month that reactors 1, 2, and 3 at the Fukushima plant experienced full meltdowns.

TEPCO announced that the accident probably released more radioactive material into the environment than Chernobyl, making it the worst nuclear accident on record.

Meanwhile, a nuclear waste advisor to the Japanese government reported that about 966 square kilometres near the power station - an area roughly 17 times the size of Manhattan - is now likely uninhabitable.

In the US, physician Janette Sherman MD and epidemiologist Joseph Mangano published an essay shedding light on a 35 per cent spike in infant mortality in northwest cities that occurred after the Fukushima meltdown, and may well be the result of fallout from the stricken nuclear plant.

The eight cities included in the report are San Jose, Berkeley, San Francisco, Sacramento, Santa Cruz, Portland, Seattle, and Boise, and the time frame of the report included the ten weeks immediately following the disaster.

"There is and should be concern about younger people being exposed, and the Japanese government will be giving out radiation monitors to children," Dr MV Ramana, a physicist with the Programme on Science and Global Security at Princeton University who specialises in issues of nuclear safety, told Al Jazeera.

Dr Ramana explained that he believes the primary radiation threat continues to be mostly for residents living within 50km of the plant, but added: "There are going to be areas outside of the Japanese government's 20km mandatory evacuation zone where radiation is higher. So that could mean evacuation zones in those areas as well."

Gundersen points out that far more radiation has been released than has been reported.

"They recalculated the amount of radiation released, but the news is really not talking about this," he said. "The new calculations show that within the first week of the accident, they released 2.3 times as much radiation as they thought they released in the first 80 days."

According to Gundersen, the exposed reactors and fuel cores are continuing to release microns of caesium, strontium, and plutonium isotopes. These are referred to as "hot particles".

"We are discovering hot particles everywhere in Japan, even in Tokyo," he said. "Scientists are finding these everywhere. Over the last 90 days these hot particles have continued to fall and are being deposited in high concentrations. A lot of people are picking these up in car engine air filters."

Radioactive air filters from cars in Fukushima prefecture and Tokyo are now common, and Gundersen says his sources are finding radioactive air filters in the greater Seattle area of the US as well.

The hot particles on them can eventually lead to cancer.

"These get stuck in your lungs or GI tract, and they are a constant irritant," he explained, "One cigarette doesn't get you, but over time they do. These [hot particles] can cause cancer, but you can't measure them with a Geiger counter. Clearly people in Fukushima prefecture have breathed in a large amount of these particles. Clearly the upper West Coast of the US has people being affected. That area got hit pretty heavy in April."

Blame the US?

In reaction to the Fukushima catastrophe, Germany is phasing out all of its nuclear reactors over the next decade. In a referendum vote this Monday, 95 per cent of Italians voted in favour of blocking a nuclear power revival in their country. A recent newspaper poll in Japan shows nearly three-quarters of respondents favour a phase-out of nuclear power in Japan.

Why have alarms not been sounded about radiation exposure in the US?

Nuclear operator Exelon Corporation has been among Barack Obama's biggest campaign donors, and is one of the largest employers in Illinois where Obama was senator. Exelon has donated more than $269,000 to his political campaigns, thus far. Obama also appointed Exelon CEO John Rowe to his Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future.

Dr Shoji Sawada is a theoretical particle physicist and Professor Emeritus at Nagoya University in Japan.
He is concerned about the types of nuclear plants in his country, and the fact that most of them are of US design.

"Most of the reactors in Japan were designed by US companies who did not care for the effects of earthquakes," Dr Sawada told Al Jazeera. "I think this problem applies to all nuclear power stations across Japan."

Using nuclear power to produce electricity in Japan is a product of the nuclear policy of the US, something Dr Sawada feels is also a large component of the problem.

"Most of the Japanese scientists at that time, the mid-1950s, considered that the technology of nuclear energy was under development or not established enough, and that it was too early to be put to practical use," he explained. "The Japan Scientists Council recommended the Japanese government not use this technology yet, but the government accepted to use enriched uranium to fuel nuclear power stations, and was thus subjected to US government policy."

As a 13-year-old, Dr Sawada experienced the US nuclear attack against Japan from his home, situated just 1400 metres from the hypocentre of the Hiroshima bomb.

"I think the Fukushima accident has caused the Japanese people to abandon the myth that nuclear power stations are safe," he said. "Now the opinions of the Japanese people have rapidly changed. Well beyond half the population believes Japan should move towards natural electricity."

A problem of infinite proportions

Dr Ramana expects the plant reactors and fuel cores to be cooled enough for a shutdown within two years.
"But it is going to take a very long time before the fuel can be removed from the reactor," he added. "Dealing with the cracking and compromised structure and dealing with radiation in the area will take several years, there's no question about that."

Dr Sawada is not as clear about how long a cold shutdown could take, and said the problem will be "the effects from caesium-137 that remains in the soil and the polluted water around the power station and underground. It will take a year, or more time, to deal with this".

Gundersen pointed out that the units are still leaking radiation.

"They are still emitting radioactive gases and an enormous amount of radioactive liquid," he said. "It will be at least a year before it stops boiling, and until it stops boiling, it's going to be cranking out radioactive steam and liquids."

Gundersen worries about more earthquake aftershocks, as well as how to cool two of the units.

"Unit four is the most dangerous, it could topple," he said. "After the earthquake in Sumatra there was an 8.6 [aftershock] about 90 days later, so we are not out of the woods yet. And you're at a point where, if that happens, there is no science for this, no one has ever imagined having hot nuclear fuel lying outside the fuel pool. They've not figured out how to cool units three and four."

Gundersen's assessment of solving this crisis is grim.

"Units one through three have nuclear waste on the floor, the melted core, that has plutonium in it, and that has to be removed from the environment for hundreds of thousands of years," he said. "Somehow, robotically, they will have to go in there and manage to put it in a container and store it for infinity, and that technology doesn't exist. Nobody knows how to pick up the molten core from the floor, there is no solution available now for picking that up from the floor."

Dr Sawada says that the creation of nuclear fission generates radioactive materials for which there is simply no knowledge informing us how to dispose of the radioactive waste safely.

"Until we know how to safely dispose of the radioactive materials generated by nuclear plants, we should postpone these activities so as not to cause further harm to future generations," he explained. "To do otherwise is simply an immoral act, and that is my belief, both as a scientist and as a survivor of the Hiroshima atomic bombing."

Gundersen believes it will take experts at least ten years to design and implement the plan.

"So ten to 15 years from now maybe we can say the reactors have been dismantled, and in the meantime you wind up contaminating the water," Gundersen said. "We are already seeing Strontium [at] 250 times the allowable limits in the water table at Fukushima. Contaminated water tables are incredibly difficult to clean. So I think we will have a contaminated aquifer in the area of the Fukushima site for a long, long time to come."

Unfortunately, the history of nuclear disasters appears to back Gundersen's assessment.

"With Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, and now with Fukushima, you can pinpoint the exact day and time they started," he said, "But they never end."

3 Nuclear Reactors Melted Down after Quake, Japan Confirms

Monday, June 6, 2011 by CNN
 

Tokyo -- Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant experienced full meltdowns at three reactors in the wake of an earthquake and tsunami in March, the country's Nuclear Emergency Response Headquarters said Monday.

3 Nuclear Reactors Melted Down after Quake, Japan Confirms. The nuclear group's new evaluation, released Monday, goes further than previous statements in describing the extent of the damage caused by an earthquake and tsunami on March 11.

The announcement will not change plans for how to stabilize the Fukushima Daiichi plant, the agency said.

Reactors 1, 2 and 3 experienced a full meltdown, it said.

The plant's owner, Tokyo Electric Power Co., admitted last month that nuclear fuel rods in reactors 2 and 3 probably melted during the first week of the nuclear crisis.

It had already said fuel rods at the heart of reactor No. 1 melted almost completely in the first 16 hours after the disaster struck. The remnants of that core are now sitting in the bottom of the reactor pressure vessel at the heart of the unit and that vessel is now believed to be leaking.

A "major part" of the fuel rods in reactor No. 2 may have melted and fallen to the bottom of the pressure vessel 101 hours after the earthquake and tsunami that crippled the plant, Tokyo Electric said May 24.

The same thing happened within the first 60 hours at reactor No. 3, the company said, in what it called its worst-case scenario analysis, saying the fuel would be sitting at the bottom of the pressure vessel in each reactor building.

But Tokyo Electric at the same time released a second possible scenario for reactors 2 and 3, one that estimated a full meltdown did not occur. In that scenario, the company estimated the fuel rods may have broken but may not have completely melted.

Temperature data showed the two reactors had cooled substantially in the more than two months since the incident, Tokyo Electric said in May.

The earthquake and tsunami knocked out cooling systems at Fukushima Daiichi, causing the three operating reactors to overheat. That compounded a natural disaster by spewing radioactive material into the atmosphere.

Tokyo Electric avoided using the term "meltdown," and says it was keeping the remnants of the core cool. But U.S. experts interviewed by CNN after the company's announcement in May said that while it may have been containing the situation, the damage had already been done.

"On the basis of what they showed, if there's not fuel left in the core, I don't know what it is other than a complete meltdown," said Gary Was, a University of Michigan nuclear engineering professor and CNN consultant. And given the damage reported at the other units, "It's hard to imagine the scenarios can differ that much for those reactors."

A massive hydrogen explosion -- a symptom of the reactor's overheating -- blew the roof off the No. 1 unit the day after the earthquake, and another hydrogen blast ripped apart the No. 3 reactor building two days later. A suspected hydrogen detonation within the No. 2 reactor is believed to have damaged that unit on March 15.

Amazing footage of the Japan Tsunami

amazing and heartbreaking video footage

Dangerous Disinformation About Radiation

Spewing From Meltdowns
By JOHN LaFORGE

Well-reported plumes of radiation have spread to California and beyond from the wrecked six-reactor complex at Fukushima, Japan. What's worse in terms of citizen awareness, clouds of disinformation are circling even faster.

The consequences of Japan's disaster cubed — earthquakes, a tsunami and spewing radiation — can hardly be exaggerated, with over 22,000 people reportedly killed or missing, widespread contamination by long-lasting isotopes like cesium, and an early estimate of $250 billion in damages.

Yet within the blizzard of radiation being dispersed uncontrollably, day after day, from Japan's wrecked reactors and their dry pools of burning-hot waste fuel, it's important to note the storm of reassuring but erroneous lullabies about "safe," "harmless" and "less than dangerous" exposures.

There is no level of radiation exposure, no matter how small, that is harmless. Every federal agency that regulates radioactive pollution agrees.

Any exposure raises cancer risk

The National Council on Radiation Protection says, "… every increment of radiation exposure produces an incremental increase in the risk of cancer."

The Environmental Protection Agency says, "… any exposure to radiation poses some risk, i.e. there is no level below which we can say an exposure poses no risk." The Department of Energy says about "low levels of radiation" that "… the major effect is a very slight increase in cancer risk."

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission says, "any amount of radiation may pose some risk for causing cancer ... any increase in dose, no matter how small, results in an incremental increase in risk." 

The National Academy of Sciences, in its "Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation VII," says, "... it is unlikely that a threshold exists for the induction of cancers ...."

Long story short, "One can no longer speak of a 'safe' dose level," as Dr. Ian Fairlie and Dr. Marvin Resnikoff said in their report "No dose too low," in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

But when representatives from government agencies, universities or industry say "the amount of radiation did not reach a dangerous level," the listener is led to believe in error that there's some level that is risk-free.

The hiding or obscuring of radiation's dispersal came from government and company officials early on who reported "venting of hydrogen gas," and claimed there was "no threat to health." Even when hydrogen gas explosions destroyed parts of four reactors, the promise of safety was repeated.

"In fact," writes environmental anthropologist Barbara Rose Johnston in the March 18 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, "the hydrogen released is tritium water vapor, a low-level [radiation] emitter that can be absorbed in a human body through simply breathing, or by drinking contaminated water."

Principle Japanese government spokesperson, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano, has been one of the worst violators. On March 21, Edano asked the public not to overreact to reports of radioactively contaminated food, saying, "Even if you eat contaminated vegetables several times, it will not harm your health at all," the BBC reported.

Spinach with radioactive iodine 27 times the government-established limit had been found in the city of Hitachi, more than 50 miles south of the failed reactors.

Outright lying, appalling laziness

On March 17, when radiation levels were reportedly 300 times normal just south of Fukushima, Associated Press writer Eric Talmadge reported without qualification that officials said, "It would take three years of constant exposure to these higher levels to raise a person's risk of cancer." This is outright lying by "officials" of course, but it also shows the appalling laziness of the AP, since information on low dose exposures is easily available from the websites of the agencies quoted above.

Dr. Chris Busby, a founder of the European Committee on Radiation Risk, and chief scientist at the Low-Level Radiation Campaign declared March 16, "Reassurances about radiation exposures issued by the Japanese government cannot be believed. They are based on an invalid risk model which the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) itself has admitted cannot be applied in accident situations."

This ICRP radiation risk model is the basis of and dominates all present radiation exposure legislation. Yet Dr. Busby reports, "The basic concept of radiation dose is generally recognized to be invalid for many types of internal exposure relevant to the present emergency."

Industry watchdogs are working to correct the errors. Mary Olson, of Nuclear Information and Resource Service writes, "Radiation carries a risk, not a certainty, of DNA damage at every level of exposure. An emission from a radionuclide that chanced to ride on your sandwich into your tummy — an exposure so tiny that it would never be measured — has the capacity to start what might become fatal cancer."

Governments have set up "permissible," "allowable" and "legal" radiation exposure limits because reactors can't operate without venting or dumping contaminated gases and liquids. Exposure to this radiation, during routine operations or from partial meltdowns — say in milk, tap water, or vegetables — is never safe. It is merely permitted under law.

Downplaying Disaster (2 articles)

(Like many people, I'm not overly concerned about being exposed to radiation from the Fukushima Nuclear plant. However, as a counterpoint to those who claim there is no problem or that officials have been forthcoming with info, I offer this article, complete with notes.--jef)

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Informational Uncertainty in the Wake of Japan's Nuclear Crisis
By GREGORY BUTTON

"In a disaster of this magnitude timely and accurate information is of utmost importance." Jim Ricco, nuclear expert. [1]

In recent days the Japanese government and Tokyo Electric Power have come under increasing criticism for their handling of the nuclear crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. Officials from both parties are under suspicion of withholding or manipulating vital information about the tragedy. After several days of incomplete and contradictory information, international nuclear experts, the international press, even the Japanese press along with some diplomatic officials have lashed out at both parties for their failure to provide sufficient information. [2] In turn, Japan's prime minister, no doubt in an attempt to point the finger in another direction, attacked the power company for not informing his government about explosions at the plant that occurred earlier last week. Yurika Ayukawa, a Chiba University professor of the environment explained, "there is no transparency about the information they are saying."[3] Uncertainty and cynical speculation about authorities' motives have become of central concern to many at home and abroad. 

Recently, Gregory Jaczko, the chairman of the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission, dispelled any doubts that there were grave inconsistencies in the way in which the Japanese government was representing the seriousness of the event when he gave a grimmer appraisal posed by the threat than that of the Japanese government. On the heels of this searing criticism came the news that levels of radiation exceeding government standards of safety had been detected in spinach and milk ninety miles from the Fukushima plant.

Eight days after the nuclear emergency began a senior official in the Japanese government stated that government officials should have admitted the severity of the crisis much earlier. [4] Whether this admission will change the government's ongoing response remains to be seen. Even if there is a serious sea change in the government's crisis communication policies such a maneuver can hardly undo all the unnecessary harm that has been inflicted by the information distortion to date. If the historical record of the behavior of officials in previous disasters is any indicator, the odds are this mea culpa may not prove to be long-lived.

Governments and corporations often downplay a disaster and provide the public with overly optimistic accounts of the severity of an event. In order to avoid public scrutiny and to safe guard corporate interests (in this case the nuclear power industry) governments often withhold vital information not only from its citizens but also from outside experts and the international community. 

In the days, weeks and even months that follows in the wake of a disaster people feel uncertain about real and perceived risks. Information about the nature and the extent of these risks is incomplete and typically conflicting. The parties involved in the disaster, as well as the media, public agencies, and non-profits release a cacophony of communications that the afflicted population and the general public often sees as conflicting and confusing. 

This sense of confusion is accentuated when, as in the present nuclear crisis in Japan, knowledge is withheld and uncertainty is amplified. In such instances both disaster victims and outside experts have to struggle to obtain credible sources of information. A common phrase that is often heard in such circumstances and has been re-iterated in the current nuclear nightmare, is "It is hard to know who to believe." For those living in close proximity to the affected area, the availability of reliable information about potential threats is critical in order for people to make accurate appraisals of how to respond to environmental threats.

The kind of informational uncertainty that has abounded in Japan in recent days generates public discourse about not only who is to blame for perceived threats and actual harm, but also who is responsible for an effective and timely remediation. It also raises questions about the severity of the event and the potential long-term harm that may ensue particularly in the case of the current crisis. Moreover, the informational vacuum that exists in the wake of a disaster, let alone a major catastrophe, can produce harmful rumors and misinformation that can obstruct a timely response. One of the major negative effects of this uncertainty and confusion is that it can seriously impede an effective and timely response to a disaster. In short, critical hours and even days can be lost in the resulting misinformation and confusion.

Science and technology are often involved in disasters especially technological ones like the one unfolding at the Fukushima nuclear reactors in Japan. Citizens commonly turn instinctively to scientists for answers, as do politicians and corporations. While the media seeks immediate answers to meet daily deadlines and the public demands instant answers, science by virtue of its methodologically rigorous approach cannot readily respond to these demands. Science can be a slow and painstaking process that often cannot produce the sound bites the media craves or the reassurances and insights the public demands. The situation is worsened when information is withheld not only from the media and the public but from the larger scientific community as well. The present crisis in Japan is unfortunately a supreme example of this type of obfuscation.

Usually such a vortex of conflicting information and lack of transparency generates a climate of controversy among scientists and the lay public. Lay people in particular are often confused by the ambiguous or contradictory statements made by some experts and puzzled about how to make sense of the ambiguities. In the present instance the media and outside experts are just as puzzled. 

In this vortex of uncertainty and lack of knowledge people can become skeptical about the reliability of scientific evidence. Some suddenly see science as lacking in certainty and incapable of resolving ambiguity. In the process, science's systematic invincibility is called into question and its monopoly on truth is challenged. Unfortunately, when officials behave as they have in the wake of this disaster, their behavior undermines the public's faith in the virtues of science. 

At times, science and engineering are seen as being the cause of the disasters such as in the case of the nuclear accident at Three Mile Island or the catastrophic meltdown in Chernobyl, or the chemical explosion in Bhopal. As a result, some individuals view science as too narrowly focused to undertake a holistic approach to solve their dilemmas or adequately address the ontological challenges that they face.

In the early days of the crisis the Japanese government reassured their nation that they were in no danger of experiencing a major nuclear disasters and downplayed any health or environmental risks. The Tokyo Electric Power issued opaque statements, which described the ongoing events in extremely sparse, technical language totally de-contextualized from the everyday lives of the citizens whose lives have been placed at risk. 

These early statements by both the government and the power company failed to disclose the true nature of the situation. Their reports were conflicting and ambiguous to the Japanese public, the media, and international nuclear experts. In fact, according to at east one report, nuclear experts have doubted the accuracy of the official information that has been issued throughout the crisis. [4] The credibility of the government's statements has also been undermined by reports that they had previously downplayed and covered up previous, less serious, nuclear events.

The Guardian reported WikiLeaks released a diplomatic cable in which "a high profile" Japanese politician told US diplomats that the Japanese governments ministry responsible for nuclear power has been "covering up nuclear accidents and obscuring the true coasts and problems associated with the nuclear industry."[6]

Examples of what have been termed "hidden episodes" include incidents reported in the New York Times. According to the Times, a fire and small amount of radiation leaked at a nuclear plant located in Kashiwazaki City. Reportedly, Tokyo Electric Power built the world's largest nuclear power plant, however unknowingly, on an active seismic fault according to an investigative report that came out in the wake of an accident. [7]

Paul Dorfman, a member of a now defunct UK advisory committee, expressed concern when he declared, "we are seeing a clear pattern of secrecy and denial" in commenting on the present crisis. According to Dorfman, "There is a profound uncertainty about the impact of the disaster. [8]

Aileen Mioko Smith, who once lived near Three Mile Island and is now a member of a member of an environmental organization in Tokyo underscored these statements by saying, "People aren't getting the information they need."[9]

Similar concerns were echoed by Kenneth Bergeron, a physicist and former Sandia Scientist, that industry assurances stressing that the situation was under control flew in the face of the fact that, "we don't know what is going on." [10]

All of which suggests that the optimistic appraisals by the government were not based so much on fact as a pubic relations campaign (and no doubt a certain degree of confusion) to downplay uncertainty and reassure the public and the international community.

In a press conference sponsored by several groups, Robert Alverz, who served at one time as a Senior Policy Advisor to the U.S. Department of Energy and a deputy Assistant secretary for National Security and the Environment, galvanized Bergeron's claim by saying, "There is a lot we don't know." In another words what these men are saying is that there isn't sufficient scientific evidence to support the downplaying of potential harm. [11]

Representative of the uncertainty and confusion surrounding the crisis is one of the updates issued Tokyo Electric Power: "Unclear if radiation was released;" terse statements such as this fail to disclose much useful information. Moreover, when speaking of potential health threats little has been said about all important topics like ignoring the health risks to low level exposure, exposure rates and cumulative risk. In short, the nuances of public health risks are glossed over and given a fuzzy presentation that fails to fully inform those especially at risk.

Indeed, thus far there have been conflicting and contradictory reports issued by the government, the power company and others making it extremely difficult to accurately assess the exact threat of radiation releases let alone what ever else may have been happening at the Fukushima Daiichi plant. Questions have been raised about the water levels in the various cooling chambers as well as questions about whether there has been damage to the containment vessels or if so, how much. Questions have also been raised about the source of some radioactive releases, the amounts of the releases, and of late, whether one of the reactors sustained structural damage prior to the present crisis during the catastrophic earthquake. These and many other questions remain unsolved in the minds of both experts and citizens alike.

Lack of transparency and the downplaying of events and the ensuing uncertainty is not only a legacy of previous disasters (e.g. Love Canal, the TVA ash spill, the BP Gulf oil spill and countless others) but the world's two nuclear disasters. Industry authorities downplayed the partial meltdown at Three Mile Island (TMI/1979) much to the chagrin of many Pennsylvania residents and their governor. Governor Thornburgh and his staff were frustrated in their attempts to reliable information from Metropolitan Edison, which tended to smooth over inconsistencies over the facts surrounding the accident. Evaluations in the wake of the event found that despite an abundance of uncertainties, the utility company adopted a public relations strategy that tended to over look the uncertainties and create more of an air of certainty. 

The degree of uncertainty that existed is best characterized by a statement made by the NRC chairman, Joseph Henrie, "We are operating almost totally in the blind…its like a couple of blind men staggering around trying to make decisions. [12] Although, we must be careful to acknowledge the over-all specificities of each case are vastly different in some ways the ambiguity of the situation surrounding TMI bares an uncanny relation to the present situation in Japan and to a lesser degree to Chernobyl.

While there was also a withholding of information and a considerable uncertainty surrounding the terrible tragedy in Chernobyl there are some extreme differences.

Most notably, in direct contrast to both TMI and recent events in Japan, the Soviet Union did not acknowledge the world's worst nuclear accident until almost three days after a series of explosions destroyed one of the reactors in Chernobyl. Nor did they evacuate the nearby town residents until almost a full day after the accident. Their acknowledgement of the catastrophe only came as the result of a radioactive plume triggered alarms at a nuclear reactor in Sweden three days after the initial explosion. 

While the U.S. government was extremely critical of the Soviet Union's lack of transparency, the U.S. government itself tried to obstruct the access of information about the world's worst nuclear disaster by attempting to withhold information that might be deemed harmful to the U.S. nuclear industry. For example, both the U.S. Department of Energy and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission imposed a gag order on their employees and contractors as well as scientists at national labs. In an attempt to limit public information and avoid any comparison between Soviet Nuclear power plants and U.S. reactors, strict instructions were issued to the above personnel to avoid press inquiries about Chernobyl or to provide only simple background information. [13] To some observers this response came as no surprise given the U.S. government's decades long downplaying of the radioactive legacies of the cold war (14].

In the wake of a disaster, governments and corporations can play a decisive role in framing the event and creating an "official" narrative. How such efforts interpret, shape and dispense knowledge and sometimes produce additional uncertainty is crucial. The ways in which knowledge is produced, or withheld, in an atmosphere of pervasive ambiguity is critical to how, and to what degree, a disaster ultimately affects both people and the environment. No matter what the nature of the institutional motive to downplay such threats the primary effect is the same: it not only denies those who are disproportionately affected by the disaster the ability to accurately appraise the threats and adopt the effective coping strategies it also seriously thwarts the ability to arrest the threats and successfully remedy the problem. In the case of the present day nuclear crisis in Japan the stakes couldn't be higher.

It is absolutely imperative that Japanese officials become more transparent in their crisis communication. It is equally imperative, as this present crisis makes clear, that officials around the world realize the severe harm that can be inflicted by the obfuscation and distortion of critical information in the wake of catastrophe.

Notes

1. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/mar/16/japan-nuclear-crisis-escalates

2.http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/17/world/asia/

3.http://www.democracynow.org/seo/2011/3/14/

4. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1367684/

5. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/mar/14/

6. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/mar/14/

7. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/us-embassy-cables-documents/175295

8. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1367684/

9. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/24/world/

10 & 11. http://www.psr.org/

12. Cora Bagley Marrett , The Accident at Three Mile Island and the Problem of Uncertainty, in The Three Mile Island Nuclear Accident: Lessons and Implications, 1988, 146-156. New York: Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences.

13. Nelkin, Dorothy, 1995, Selling Science: How the Press Covers Science and Technology. New York: W.H. Freeman and Company.

14. Johnston, Barbara, ed., 2007, Half-Lives & Half Truths: Confronting the Radioactive Legacies of the Cold War. Santa Fe, NM: School for Advanced Research.

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What They're Covering Up at Fukushima
By HIROSE TAKASHI
Introduced by Douglas Lummis - Okinawa

Hirose Takashi has written a whole shelf full of books, mostly on the nuclear power industry and the military-industrial complex.  Probably his best known book is  Nuclear Power Plants for Tokyo in which he took the logic of the nuke promoters to its logical conclusion: if you are so sure that they're safe, why not build them in the center of the city, instead of hundreds of miles away where you lose half the electricity in the wires?  

He did the TV interview that is partly translated below somewhat against his present impulses.  I talked to him on the telephone today (March 22 , 2011) and he told me that while it made sense to oppose nuclear power back then, now that the disaster has begun he would just as soon remain silent, but the lies they are telling on the radio and TV are so gross that he cannot remain silent.

I have translated only about the first third of the interview (you can see the whole thing in Japanese on you-tube), the part that pertains particularly to what is happening at the Fukushima plants.  In the latter part he talked about how dangerous radiation is in general, and also about the continuing danger of earthquakes.

After reading his account, you will wonder, why do they keep on sprinkling water on the reactors, rather than accept the sarcophagus solution  [ie., entombing the reactors in concrete. Editors.] I think there are a couple of answers.  One, those reactors were expensive, and they just can't bear the idea of that huge a financial loss.  But more importantly, accepting the sarcophagus solution means admitting that they were wrong, and that they couldn't fix the things.  On the one hand that's too much guilt for a human being to bear.  On the other, it means the defeat of the nuclear energy idea, an idea they hold to with almost religious devotion.  And it means not just the loss of those six (or ten) reactors, it means shutting down all the others as well, a financial catastrophe.  If they can only get them cooled down and running again they can say, See, nuclear power isn't so dangerous after all.  Fukushima is a drama with the whole world watching, that can end in the defeat or (in their frail, I think groundless, hope) victory for the nuclear industry.  Hirose's account can help us to understand what the drama is about. Douglas Lummis

Hirose Takashi:  The Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant Accident and the State of the Media

Broadcast by Asahi NewStar, 17 March, 20:00

Interviewers: Yo and Maeda Mari

Yo:  Today many people saw water being sprayed on the reactors from the air and from the ground, but is this effective?

Hirose:  . . . If you want to cool a reactor down with water, you have to circulate the water inside and carry the heat away, otherwise it has no meaning. So the only solution is to reconnect the electricity.  Otherwise it’s like pouring water on lava.

Yo:  Reconnect the electricity – that’s to restart the cooling system?

Hirose:  Yes.  The accident was caused by the fact that the tsunami flooded the emergency generators and carried away their fuel tanks.  If that isn’t fixed, there’s no way to recover from this accident.

Yo: Tepco [Tokyo Electric Power Company, owner/operator of the nuclear plants] says they expect to bring in a high voltage line this evening.

Hirose: Yes, there’s a little bit of hope there.  But what’s worrisome is that a nuclear reactor is not like what the schematic pictures show (shows a graphic picture of a reactor, like those used on TV).  This is just a cartoon.  Here’s what it looks like underneath a reactor container (shows a photograph).  This is the butt end of the reactor.  Take a look.  It’s a forest of switch levers and wires and pipes.  On television these pseudo-scholars come on and give us simple explanations, but they know nothing, those college professors.  Only the engineers know.  This is where water has been poured in.  This maze of pipes is enough to make you dizzy.  Its structure is too wildly complex for us to understand. For a week now they have been pouring water through there.  And it’s salt water, right?  You pour salt water on a hot kiln and what do you think happens?  You get salt. The salt will get into all these valves and cause them to freeze.  They won’t move.  This will be happening everywhere.  So I can’t believe that it’s just a simple matter of you reconnecting the electricity and the water will begin to circulate.  I think any engineer with a little imagination can understand this.  You take a system as unbelievably complex as this and then actually dump water on it from a helicopter – maybe they have some idea of how this could work, but I can’t understand it.

Yo:  It will take 1300 tons of water to fill the pools that contain the spent fuel rods in reactors 3 and 4.  This morning 30 tons.  Then the Self Defense Forces are to hose in another 30 tons from five trucks.  That’s nowhere near enough, they have to keep it up.  Is this squirting of water from hoses going to change the situation?

Hirose:  In principle, it can’t.  Because even when a reactor is in good shape, it requires constant control to keep the temperature down to where it is barely safe.  Now it’s a complete mess inside, and when I think of the 50 remaining operators, it brings tears to my eyes.  I assume they have been exposed to very large amounts of radiation, and that they have accepted that they face death by staying there.  And how long can they last?  I mean, physically.  That’s what the situation has come to now.  When I see these accounts on television, I want to tell them, “If that’s what you say, then go there and do it yourself!”  Really, they talk this nonsense, trying to reassure everyone, trying to avoid panic.  What we need now is a proper panic.  Because the situation has come to the point where the danger is real.  

If I were Prime Minister Kan, I would order them to do what the Soviet Union did when the Chernobyl reactor blew up, the sarcophagus solution, bury the whole thing under cement, put every cement company in Japan to work, and dump cement over it from the sky.  Because you have to assume the worst case.  Why?  Because in Fukushima there is the Daiichi Plant with six reactors and the Daini Plant with four for a total of ten reactors.  If even one of them develops the worst case, then the workers there must either evacuate the site or stay on and collapse.  So if, for example, one of the reactors at Daiichi goes down, the other five are only a matter of time.  We can’t know in what order they will go, but certainly all of them will go.  And if that happens, Daini isn’t so far away, so probably the reactors there will also go down.  Because I assume that workers will not be able to stay there. 

I’m speaking of the worst case, but the probability is not low.  This is the danger that the world is watching.  Only in Japan is it being hidden.  As you know, of the six reactors at Daiichi, four are in a crisis state.  So even if at one everything goes well and water circulation is restored, the other three could still go down.  Four are in crisis, and for all four to be 100 per cent repaired, I hate to say it, but I am pessimistic.  If so, then to save the people, we have to think about some way to reduce the radiation leakage to the lowest level possible.  Not by spraying water from hoses, like sprinkling water on a desert.  We have to think of all six going down, and the possibility of that happening is not low.  Everyone knows how long it takes a typhoon to pass over Japan; it generally takes about a week.  That is, with a wind speed of two meters per second, it could take about five days for all of Japan to be covered with radiation.  We’re not talking about distances of 20 kilometers or 30 kilometers or 100 kilometers.  It means of course Tokyo, Osaka.  That’s how fast a radioactive cloud could spread. Of course it would depend on the weather; we can’t know in advance how the radiation would be distributed.  It would be nice if the wind would blow toward the sea, but it doesn’t always do that.  Two days ago, on the 15th, it was blowing toward Tokyo.  That’s how it is. . . .

Yo: Every day the local government is measuring the radioactivity.  All the television stations are saying that while radiation is rising, it is still not high enough to be a danger to health. They compare it to a stomach x-ray, or if it goes up, to a CT scan.  What is the truth of the matter?

Hirose: For example, yesterday.  Around Fukushima Daiichi Station they measured 400 millisieverts – that’s per hour.  With this measurement (Chief Cabinet Secretary) Edano admitted for the first time that there was a danger to health, but he didn’t explain what this means.  All of the information media are at fault here I think.  They are saying stupid things like, why, we are exposed to radiation all the time in our daily life, we get radiation from outer space.  But that’s one millisievert per year.  A year has 365 days, a day has 24 hours; multiply 365 by 24, you get 8760.  Multiply the 400 millisieverts by that, you get 3,500,000 the normal dose.  You call that safe?  And what media have reported this?  None.  They compare it to a CT scan, which is over in an instant; that has nothing to do with it.  The reason radioactivity can be measured is that radioactive material is escaping.  What is dangerous is when that material enters your body and irradiates it from inside.  These industry-mouthpiece scholars come on TV and what to they say?  They say as you move away the radiation is reduced in inverse ratio to the square of the distance.  I want to say the reverse.  Internal irradiation happens when radioactive material is ingested into the body.  What happens?  Say there is a nuclear particle one meter away from you. You breathe it in, it sticks inside your body; the distance between you and it is now at the micron level. One meter is 1000 millimeters, one micron is one thousandth of a millimeter.  That’s a thousand times a thousand squared.  That’s the real meaning of “inverse ratio of the square of the distance.”  Radiation exposure is increased by a factor of a trillion.  Inhaling even the tiniest particle, that’s the danger. 

Yo:  So making comparisons with X-rays and CT scans has no meaning.  Because you can breathe in radioactive material.

Hirose:  That’s right.  When it enters your body, there’s no telling where it will go.  The biggest danger is women, especially pregnant women, and little children.  Now they’re talking about iodine and cesium, but that’s only part of it, they’re not using the proper detection instruments.  What they call monitoring means only measuring the amount of radiation in the air.  Their instruments don’t eat.  What they measure has no connection with the amount of radioactive material. . . . 

Yo:  So damage from radioactive rays and damage from radioactive material are not the same.

Hirose:  If you ask, are any radioactive rays from the Fukushima Nuclear Station here in this studio, the answer will be no.  But radioactive particles are carried here by the air.  When the core begins to melt down, elements inside like iodine turn to gas.  It rises to the top, so if there is any crevice it escapes outside.

Yo:  Is there any way to detect this?

Hirose: I was told by a newspaper reporter that now Tepco is not in shape even to do regular monitoring.  They just take an occasional measurement, and that becomes the basis of Edano’s statements.  You have to take constant measurements, but they are not able to do that.  And you need to investigate just what is escaping, and how much.  That requires very sophisticated measuring instruments.  You can’t do it just by keeping a monitoring post.  It’s no good just to measure the level of radiation in the air.  Whiz in by car, take a measurement, it’s high, it’s low – that’s not the point.  We need to know what kind of radioactive materials are escaping, and where they are going – they don’t have a system in place for doing that now.