Thread: Japan Earthquake: Fukushima

Roughly six years between the big Indonesian quake (2004) and the eruptions of Murapi (2010) and Lokon (2011) so we may well see Fuji blow around 2017 - 2018.

New leak at Japan nuke plant due to tank overflow
Oct 03, 2013

TOKYO (AP) — Japan’s crippled nuclear plant has a new leak of highly radioactive water entering the Pacific Ocean after a storage tank overflowed.

Plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. said Thursday that workers detected the water dripping from the top of a tank when they were patrolling the site the night before.

Pic: AP.

TEPCO estimates 430 liters (110 gallons) of water leaked outside a concrete barrier surrounding the tank and four others. TEPCO believes the water reached the sea via a ditch next to the barrier.

Massive amounts of water have been used to cool the reactors and fuel rods since the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami destroyed the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant’s cooling system. Leaks of the contaminated water are causing concerns over the plant’s stability.

asiancorrespondent.com

Ineptitude beyond comprehension.

^Well, like I always say, they built a reactor complex near the beach in the country that invented the word tsunami (also ignoring stone markers left by people centuries ago on hills saying "Don't build anything you want to keep below this point"). Not Japan's most genius thinkers. Now they want to build an ice wall, which will take years and of course there won't be another M8+ quake in the meantime, no way.

High levels of toxic water leaks at Japanese nuclear plant
October 21, 2013

Tokyo - Highly radioactive water overflowed 12 barriers around storage tanks at the Fukushima nuclear plant, the operator said Monday.

Some of the contaminated water might have flowed into the Pacific Ocean from the tanks at the plant, Tokyo Electric Power Co said.

More than 100 millimetres of rain was recorded at the plant over four hours on Sunday afternoon, public broadcaster NHK said.

The overflows are the latest in a string of radiation-contaminated water problems at the plant.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe reiterated that the situation "is under control." Tokyo Electric has built about 1,000 storage tanks to contain contaminated water from three reactors that suffered meltdowns after the complex was struck by the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami.

The operator has been battling with leaks from the tanks as it continues to inject water into the three reactors to keep them cool.

In late August, about 300 tonnes of radiation-contaminated water leaked from a storage tank, some of which could have reached the sea, the operator said.

nationmultimedia.com

Originally Posted by Mid

some of which could have reached the sea

Oh my Cod.

Magnitude-7.1 hits north-eastern Japan, tsunami observed
October 26, 2013

Tokyo - A magnitude-7.1 earthquake struck early Saturday off the coast of north-eastern Japan, prompting authorities to urge residents to evacuate prefectures and issue a tsunami warning.

The tremor occurred at 2:10 am (17:10 Friday GMT) and its epicenter was located off Fukushima prefecture at a depth of 10 kilometres, the Japan Meteorological Agency said.

The quake prompted the agency to issue tsunami warning and thousands of residents were urged to evacuate in the prefectures of Iwate and Miyagi. Tsunami waves of up to 0.4 metres were observed on the coast of north-eastern Japan after the quake, the agency said.

There were no reports of casualties or damage, and no abnormalities were detected at the damaged Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, where three nuclear reactors suffered meltdowns after a tsunami swept through the plant in March 2011.

nationmultimedia.com

Small tsunami reaches Japan after earthquake
map
A small tsunami triggered by a quake has hit Japan's eastern coast - where the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant is located - but no damage is reported.



The 30cm (1ft) waves reached the region after the 7.1 magnitude tremor struck at a depth of 10km (six miles), about 320km off the coast.

A tsunami alert issued for several areas was later lifted.

Workers at the Fukushima power station had been told to leave waterfront areas for higher ground.

But a Fukushima spokesman later said there was no damage or change in readings at radiation monitoring posts around the plant, according to Reuters news agency.

The Japan Meteorological Agency had warned that a small tsunami - up to one metre (3.3ft) - could reach the eastern coast after the tremor in the Pacific Ocean.

The agency had also issued a "yellow" advisory for Fukushima and the prefectures of Iwate, Miyagi, Ibaraki and parts of Chiba.

But it added: "Though there may be slight sea-level change in coastal regions, no tsunami damage is expected."
BBC News - Small tsunami reaches Japan after earthquake

too many adverts on tv now advising what to do about cancer.
don't be afraid to tell your doctor,,,

The heart-breaking news from Fukushima just keeps getting worse…a LOT worse…it is, quite simply, an out-of-control flow of death and destruction. TEPCO is finally admitting that radiation has been leaking to the Pacific Ocean all along. and it’s NOT over….






It now appears that anywhere from 300 to possibly over 450 tons of contaminated water that contains radioactive iodone, cesium, and strontium-89 and 90, is flooding into the Pacific Ocean from the Fukushima Daichi site everyday.

To give you an idea of how bad that actually is, Japanese experts estimate Fukushima’s fallout at 20-30 times as high as as the Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear bombings in 1945.

There’s a lot you’re not being told. Oh, the information is out there, but you have to dig pretty deep to find it, and you won’t find it on the corporate-owned evening news.

Read more at Fukushima Radiation: Your Days of Eating Pacific Ocean Fish Are Over, Or Worse


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A can of Canadian Brunswick sardines used to cost $2 or thereabouts in NZ, all dropped 50 cents in price in the last week, strange, as the Canadian Pacific sardine fleet didn't catch a single sardine this year!!!


----
The Vancouver Sun:

The commercial disappearance of the small schooling fish is having repercussions all the way up the food chain to threatened humpback whales.

Jim Darling, a Tofino-based whale biologist with the Pacific Wildlife Foundation, said in an interview Monday that humpbacks typically number in the hundreds near the west coast of Vancouver Island in summer. They were observed only sporadically this year, including by the commercial whalewatching industry.

“Humpbacks are telling us that something has changed,” he said. “Ocean systems are so complex, it’s really hard to know what it means. For one year, I don’t think there’s any reason to be alarmed, but there is certainly reason to be curious.”

Humpbacks instead were observed farther offshore, possibly feeding on alternative food sources such as herring, sandlance, anchovies, or krill, but not in the numbers observed near shore in recent years.

Canadian Pacific Fishermen Catch No Sardines in 2013 - Truthdig

They are pulling the rods out of the reactors this week. Tepco has contracted the job out to uneducated laborers as they don't want to send their own people in.

Some of my friends here fear for the worst and have said to have your cash , backpack and a good pair of walking shoes ready for a Long walk in the opposite direction to the nearest airport .

There was an interview with an expert in the field who was asked what would happen if they happen to drop the rods, or the unstable containers housing them were to collapse. His answer was short and to the point " mo owari des " - which means " we are all finished".

Meanwhile here in Tokyo the locals really don't know what is going on, and are carrying on their lives as if nothing is out of the ordinary ,..

Some more photos of the damage to the plant:

Fukushima Update: Fuel Rods to Be Removed from Pool at Nuclear Plant | Weather Underground

I would have thought the start of rod removal was a good sign since it means they have cooled down sufficiently. 1500+ fuel rods...going to be a slow process....

The Problems of Fukushima

There are three major problems at Fukushima:

(1) Three reactor cores are missing;

(2) Radiated water has been leaking from the plant in mass quantities for 2.5 years; and

(3) Eleven thousand spent nuclear fuel rods, perhaps the most dangerous things ever created by humans, are stored at the plant and need to be removed, 1,533 of those are in a very precarious and dangerous position. Each of these three could result in dramatic radiation events, unlike any radiation exposure humans have ever experienced. We’ll discuss them in order, saving the most dangerous for last.

Missing reactor cores: Since the accident at Fukushima on March 11, 2011, three reactor cores have gone missing. There was an unprecedented three reactor ‘melt-down.’ These melted cores, called corium lavas, are thought to have passed through the basements of reactor buildings 1, 2 and 3, and to be somewhere in the ground underneath.

......the possibility of a multiple meltdown, but that is what occurred at Fukushima. ...It is an unprecedented situation to not know where these cores are.

TEPCO is pouring water where they think the cores are, but they are not sure. There are occasional steam eruptions coming from the grounds of the reactors, so the cores are thought to still be hot.

The concern is that the corium lavas will enter or may have already entered the aquifer below the plant. That would contaminate a much larger area with radioactive elements. Some suggest that it would require the area surrounding Tokyo, 40 million people, to be evacuated.

Another concern is that if the corium lavas enter the aquifer, they could create a "super-heated pressurized steam reaction beneath a layer of caprock causing a major 'hydrovolcanic' explosion."

A further concern is that a large reserve of groundwater which is coming in contact with the corium lavas is migrating towards the ocean at the rate of four meters per month. This could release greater amounts of radiation than were released in the early days of the disaster.




Radioactive water leaking into the Pacific Ocean:

TEPCO did not admit that leaks of radioactive water were occurring until July of this year....... The Japanese government finally admitted that the situation was urgent this September – an emergency they did not acknowledge until 2.5 years after the water problem began.

How much radioactive water is leaking into the ocean? An estimated 300 tons (71,895 gallons/272,152 liters) of contaminated water is flowing into the ocean every day.

One month after ..... has been contaminated with radiation that originated in Fukushima. ,,,... the FDA announced it was going to stop testing fish in the Pacific Ocean for radiation.......every bluefin tuna tested in the waters off California....... "The tuna packaged it up (the radiation) and brought it across the world’s largest ocean..... see it in every one we measured.....every one of them had comparable concentrations of cesium 134 and cesium 137."

In addition, Science reports that fish near Fukushima are being found to have high levels of the radioactive isotope, cesium-134. The levels found in these fish are not decreasing, which indicates that radiation-polluted water continues to leak into the ocean. At least 42 fish species from the area around the plant are considered unsafe. South Korea has banned Japanese fish as a result of the ongoing leaks.

The half-life (time it takes for half of the element to decay) of cesium 134 is 2.0652 years. For cesium 137, the half-life is 30.17 years. Cesium does not sink to the ocean floor, so fish swim through it. What are the human impacts of cesium?
.
...."dilution is no solution." The fact that the Pacific Ocean is large does not change the fact that these radioactive elements have long half-lives. Radiation in water is taken up by vegetation, then smaller fish eat the vegetation, larger fish eat the smaller fish and at the top of the food chain we will find fish like tuna, dolphin and whales with concentrated levels of radiation. Humans at the top of the food chain could be eating these contaminated fish.

Each day TEPCO injects 400 tons of water into the destroyed facilities to keep them cool; about half is recycled, and the rest goes into the above-ground tanks..... The tanks being used for storage were put together rapidly and are already leaking. They expect to have 800,000 tons of radioactive water stored on the site by 2016.

The Asia-Pacific Journal concludes: "So at present there is no real solution to the water problem."
The most recent news on the water problem at Fukushima adds to the concerns. On October 11, 2013, TEPCO disclosed that the radioactivity level spiked 6,500 times at a Fukushima well. "TEPCO said the findings show that radioactive substances like strontium have reached the groundwater. High levels of tritium, which transfers much easier in water than strontium, had already been detected."



Spent Fuel Rods:

As bad as the problems of radioactive water and missing cores are, the biggest problem at Fukushima comes from the spent fuel rods. The plant has been in operation for 40 years. As a result, they are storing 11 thousand spent fuel rods on the grounds of the Fukushima plant. These fuel rods are composed of highly radioactive materials such as plutonium and uranium. They are about the width of a thumb and about 15 feet long.

The biggest and most immediate challenge is the 1,533 spent fuel rods packed tightly in a pool four floors above Reactor 4.

Before the storm hit, those rods had been removed for routine maintenance of the reactor. But, now they are stored 100 feet in the air in damaged racks. They weigh a total of 400 tons and contain radiation equivalent to 14,000 times the amount released by the Hiroshima atomic bomb.

The building in which these rods are stored has been damaged. TEPCO reinforced it with a steel frame, but the building itself is buckling and sagging, vulnerable to collapse if another earthquake or storm hits the area. Additionally, the ground under and around the building is becoming saturated with water, which further undermines the integrity of the structure and could cause it to tilt.

How dangerous?....the fuel rods are clad in zirconium which can ignite if they lose coolant. They could also ignite or explode if rods break or hit each other.....this could result in a fission explosion like an atomic bomb,........ others say that is not what would happen, but agree it would be "a reaction like we have never seen before, a nuclear fire releasing incredible amounts of radiation,"

These are not the only spent fuel rods at the plant, they are just the most precarious. There are 11,000 fuel rods scattered around the plant, 6,000 in a cooling pool less than 50 meters from the sagging Reactor 4.

If a fire erupts in the spent fuel pool at Reactor 4, it could ignite the rods in the cooling pool and lead to an even greater release of radiation. It could set off a chain reaction that could not be stopped.

There is no question that the 1,533 spent fuel rods need to be removed. But "They are going to have difficulty in removing a significant number of the rods."

"If you think of a nuclear fuel rack as a pack of cigarettes, if you pull a cigarette straight up it will come out — but these racks have been distorted. Now when they go to pull the cigarette straight out, it’s going to likely break and release radioactive cesium and other gases, xenon and krypton, into the air.

I suspect come November, December, January we’re going to hear that the building’s been evacuated, they’ve broke a fuel rod, the fuel rod is off-gassing."

... it is "worse than pulling cigarettes out of a crumbled cigarette pack." It is likely they used salt water as a coolant out of desperation, which would cause corrosion because the rods were never meant to be in salt water. The condition of the rods is unknown. There is debris in the coolant, so there has been some crumbling from somewhere. Gundersen adds,

"The roof has fallen in, which further distorted the racks," noting that if a fuel rod snaps, it will release radioactive gas which will require at a minimum evacuation of the plant. They will release those gases into the atmosphere and try again.
The Japan Times writes: "The consequences could be far more severe than any nuclear accident the world has ever seen. If a fuel rod is dropped, breaks or becomes entangled while being removed, possible worst case scenarios include a big explosion, a meltdown in the pool, or a large fire. Any of these situations could lead to massive releases of deadly radionuclides into the atmosphere.

This is not the usual moving of fuel rods. TEPCO has been saying this is routine, but in fact it is unique – a feat of engineering never done before. As Gundersen says:

"Tokyo Electric is portraying this as easy. In a normal nuclear reactor, all of this is done with computers. Everything gets pulled perfectly vertically. Well nothing is vertical anymore, the fuel racks are distorted, it’s all going to have to be done manually. The net effect is it’s a really difficult job. It wouldn’t surprise me if they snapped some of the fuel and they can’t remove it."

Gregory Jaczko, Former Chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission concurs with Gundersen describing the removal of the spent fuel rods as "a very significant activity, and . . . very, very unprecedented."
Wasserman sums the challenge up: "We are doing something never done before – bent, crumbling, brittle fuel rods being removed from a pool that is compromised, in a building that is sinking, sagging and buckling, and it all must done under manual control, not with computers." And the potential damage from failure would affect hundreds of millions of people.



The Solutions

The three major problems at Fukushima are all unprecedented,... There are no clear solutions but there are steps that need to be taken urgently to get the Fukushima clean-up and de-commissioning on track and minimize the risks.

The first thing that is needed is to end the media blackout. ..Tepco’s management of the stricken power plant has been described as a comedy of errors...Indeed the entire Fukushima catastrophe could have been avoided:

"Tepco at first blamed the accident on ‘an unforeseen massive tsunami’ triggered by the Great East Japan Earthquake on March 11, 2011. Then it admitted it had in fact foreseen just such a scenario but hadn’t done anything about it."

Then, the meltdown itself was denied for months, with TEPCO claiming it had not been confirmed. Japan Times reports that "in December 2011, the government announced that the plant had reached ‘a state of cold shutdown.’

"The plant is being run on makeshift equipment and breakdowns are endemic. Among nearly a dozen serious problems since April ......... a rat that chewed enough wires to short-circuit a switchboard, causing a power outage that interrupted cooling for nearly 30 hours. Later, the cooling system for a fuel-storage pool had to be switched off for safety checks when two dead rats were found in a transformer box."



Facing Reality

Facing reality is a common problem throughout the nuclear industry and those who continue to push for nuclear energy.

..."unnecessary, uneconomic, uninsurable, unevacuable and, most importantly, unsafe." ....there are nuclear plants in the US that are near earthquake faults, among them are plants near Los Angeles, New York City and Washington, DC. And, Fukushima was based on a design by General Electric, which was also used to build 23 reactors in the US. [/I][/B]

If we faced reality, public officials would be organizing evacuation drills in those cities. If we did so, Americans would quickly learn that if there is a serious nuclear accident, US cities could not be evacuated. Activists making the reasonable demand for evacuation drills may be a very good strategy to end nuclear power.

....as bad as Fukushima is, it is not the worst case scenario for a nuclear disaster. Fukushima was 120 kilometers (75 miles) from the center of the earthquake. If that had been 20 kilometers (12 miles), the plant would have been reduced to rubble and caused an immediate nuclear catastrophe."

Excerpted from;
Fukushima - A Global Threat That Requires a Global Response

It all looks relatively simple in the video....

TEPCO : News | Photos and Videos Library - Videos

What alternatives are there from the Doom and Gloom merchants?

Doesn't it?
A good PR job by TEPCO. Looks straightforward.

If only the spent fuel rod carrier frames and rods weren't buckled or damaged or misaligned in any way.

US to help TEPCO with dangerous Fukushima fuel rods removal
Nov 04, 2013

The removal of the nuclear fuel rods from the cooling pool of the disaster-stricken Fukushima nuclear power plant is touted to be one of the most dangerous processes in the decommissioning of the nuclear facility – dangerous enough that it could spark a whole new nuclear disaster if done wrong.

It must come as a small relief that Naomi Hirose, president of Fukushima operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO), has announced that he has agreed to accept the help of the United States Department of Energy with the fuel rod removal process.

Hirose revealed that he had agreed to accept the offer of help during talks with U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz when they visited Fukushima No. 1 on Friday to inspect preparations to remove fuel rods from the reactor 4 storage pool.

TEPCO has had to endure a long string of highly-publicized gaffes – with power issues and radioactive waste water leaks – that the Japanese public has questioned the operator’s capability to undergo the highly risky process on their own. Following huge public criticism of the country’s reluctance to accept foreign assistance, Japan has recently begun to show more willingness to do so.

“As Japan continues to chart its sovereign path forward on the cleanup at the Fukushima site and works to determine the future of energy economy, the United States stands ready to continue assisting our partners in this daunting yet indispensable task,” Moniz said in a statement late Friday.

Hirose also said in an interview that, “We will work together to tackle many challenges toward decommissioning. I have high hopes that we will be able to benefit from U.S. experience and expertise at Fukushima No. 1.”

Moniz revealed that a Japan-U.S. commission will meet in Washington this week to strengthen cooperation in civil nuclear research and development, as well as the Fukushima cleanup and decommissioning, including the evaluation of emergency response and regulatory issues.

Moniz also added that he expects atomic power to remain a crucial part of the energy mix around the world as nations try to battle global warming. In a speech Thursday in Tokyo, he said “the success of the cleanup also has global significance. So we all have a direct interest in seeing that the next steps are taken well, efficiently and safely.”

US to help TEPCO with dangerous Fukushima fuel rods removal - The Japan Daily Press

Talk about face saving!!

It looks as if the only reason TEPCO didn't act promptly in avoiding a whole series of disasters within the Fukushima complex was because of feared "loss of face", as in,"As Japan continues to chart its sovereign path forward...." etc, by Moniz re. Japan.

FUEL ROD REMOVAL ATTEMPT AT FUKUSHIMA UNIT 4 DELAYED, POSSIBLY FOR WEEKS NOVEMBER 5, 2013

Reactor-No.4-Fukushima-Daiichi-fuelvia Nov. 5, 2013 The utility had intended to start removing the fuel rods from the unit’s packed cooling pool as early as Friday.

The test was requested by the Japan Nuclear Energy Safety Organization. The government-affiliated agency called for an initial test that would include transporting a protective fuel cask from the No. 4 storage pool to another pool in a different building about 100 meters away, to provide more stable conditions for cooling spent fuel, the sources said.

The agency has already inspected the equipment to be used in the operation on behalf of the Nuclear Regulation Authority. It has also urged Tepco to have its work evaluated by a group of Japanese and overseas experts formed by the International Research Institute for Nuclear Decommissioning, a Tokyo-based organization founded by Japanese government agencies, nuclear facility manufacturers and electric power companies.

Of the four reactors in use at the time of the March 2011 disasters, only the No. 4 unit avoided meltdown because it had been defueled for maintenance and all its rods were sitting in its spent fuel pool.

The building housing the No. 4 reactor and the storage pool, however, was hit by fires and a hydrogen explosion after the station lost power, disrupting the pool’s cooling system. More than 1,300 spent fuel assemblies and more than 200 fresh ones, including some containing plutonium-infused mixed-oxide fuel, remain in the pool.

A crane has been installed to carry a protective cask into and out of the pool. The spent fuel will be placed in the cask and moved to a nearby storage pool by trailer.

The work at unit 4 will mark a new stage in the decommissioning process for the four damaged reactors.

In the meantime, efforts continue to secure the massive amount of highly radioactive water accumulating at the plant from the perpetual cooling operations at the reactors. Ground water creeping into the premises has been compounding the problem, with leaky storage tanks raising public fears of ocean contamination.

Tokyo Electric Power Co. will conduct a fuel removal test at the No. 4 reactor building of the stricken Fukushima No. 1 power plant, delaying the start of the actual operation by up to two weeks, sources close to the matter said Monday.

Fukushima Update | Fuel rod removal attempt at Fukushima Unit 4 delayed, possibly for weeks

Here's a story they can't explain now. Fukushima's radiation probably is coming down along the west coast by now. Who knows if there is any relation.

Disease Ravaging West Coast Starfish - Business Insider

High thyroid cancer rates detected in Fukushima children
Mark Willacy
Tuesday, November 5, 2013

TONY EASTLEY: One of the terrible legacies of the radioactive fallout from the Russian disaster at Chernobyl is now being visited upon people in Japan.

Researchers in Fukushima are uncovering higher than expected rates of thyroid cancer in children.

One prominent former thyroid surgeon - a veteran of the Chernobyl disaster - has told the ABC's Foreign Correspondent program that the number of cancer cases in Fukushima are emerging faster than expected.

But another cancer specialist says that the high rate is simply a product of widespread, sensitive screening and no-one should be alarmed.

The ABC's North Asia correspondent Mark Willacy reports from Fukushima.

(Sound of child crying)

MARK WILLACY: Two-year-old Yuta Koike is having none of it. Every time the nurse tries to run the probe over his neck he cries, kicks, and tries to slide off the bed.

His mother, Tomoko Koike, has brought Yuta and his four-year-old sister Saki in for a thyroid gland screening because she fears the fallout from the nearby Fukushima nuclear plant.

(Sound of Tomoko Koike speaking in Japanese).

"I am worried," she tells me, "but I believe they're okay. I am hoping they're okay," she adds.

Before the nuclear meltdowns, health authorities estimated thyroid cancer rates among Fukushima's children at between one and two cases in every million.

Since the disaster the Fukushima local government has carried out a large-scale screening program and with about 200,000 children tested, there have been 18 confirmed cases of thyroid cancer and 25 more suspected cases - an unexpectedly high rate.

Akira Sugenoya is the mayor of Matsumoto City in Nagano but he's also a respected thyroid surgeon who spent five years treating children in Ukraine and Belarus who developed thyroid cancer after the Chernobyl disaster.

(Sound of Akira Sugenoya speaking in Japanese).

"When I look at Fukushima now the number of thyroid cancer cases in kids is quite high," says Dr Sugenoya. "The doctors in Fukushima say that it shouldn't be emerging this fast, so they say it's not related to the accident. But that's very unscientific, and it's not a reason that we can accept," he says.

But other experts believe there's nothing to fear.

GERALDINE THOMAS: Following Fukushima I doubt that there'll be any rise in thyroid cancers in Japan.

MARK WILLACY: Professor Geraldine Thomas is a specialist in the molecular pathology of cancer at Imperial College London.

She also helped establish the Chernobyl Tissue Bank, which analyses samples from people exposed to radiation after the nuclear disaster in 1986.

She argues that there's a simple reason for the higher than expected incidence of thyroid cancer among Fukushima's children.

GERALDINE THOMAS: If you look for a problem, especially if you use an incredibly sensitive technique, which is what the Japanese are actually doing, you will find something.

MARK WILLACY: Everyone agrees that what's most important is detecting thyroid cancers early because if found in the early stages it's almost always successfully treated.

But as Foreign Correspondent discovered, Fukushima's health authorities are acting almost in secret, even refusing our request for a simple age breakdown of the thyroid cancer victims, citing privacy reasons.

This refusal to share basic data has aroused the suspicions of thyroid specialist Akira Sugenoya.

(Sound of Akira Sugenoya speaking in Japanese)

"I'm still very angry," says Dr Sugenoya. "I think they have this data, so it's very strange why they won't release it," he says.

And it's not just the thyroid data that has been kept secret, so too were the initial meetings of the Fukushima panel charged with screening the region's children.

For parents like Tomoko Koike, who are worried about the effect of the fallout on their young children, it smells like a cover up.

(Sound of Tomoko Koike speaking in Japanese)

"I do not think they're telling us everything," she says. "I cannot trust what they say. So it makes me worry about my kids' future. It depresses me," she says.

Adding to that worry for Tomoko Koike has been the discovery of cysts on the thyroid gland of her four-year-old daughter Saki.

While not regarded as malignant, the cysts will have to be monitored in the months and possibly years to come.

xxx.xxx.xx

A lengthy article, I found it quite informative.
Excerpts below.

Endless Fukushima catastrophe: Many generations’ health at stake

"Bio-accumulation of radioactive elements around Fukushima will devastate many future Japanese generations, while the Pacific Ocean is also being contaminated by leaking radioactive water. Yet there is still no good solution from the Japanese government."



"There were three nuclear reactors undergoing fission at the time while one, unit four, had just been emptied of its radioactive core, which was now situated in an unprotected cooling pool on the roof of the building, 100 feet (30 meters) above the ground.

As the power supply to the reactors was disrupted during the earthquake, and the auxiliary diesel generators in the basements of the reactors failed because they were flooded, the pumps which supplied up to 1 million gallons of cooling water to each reactor failed.

Within hours the intensely hot radioactive cores in units one, two and three started to melt. As they melted, the zirconium metal cladding on the uranium fuel rods reacted with water to produce hydrogen which exploded with overwhelming intensity in the buildings of units one, two, three and four releasing huge amounts of radioactive elements into the air.

Over a period of time two-and-a-half to three times more noble gases were released into the air than at Chernobyl.......Noble gases are very high energy gamma emitters similar to x-rays,

But over 100 other radioactive elements were also released.....thousands of people were exposed to clouds of radiation. The damaged reactors continue to emit radioactive airborne releases to this day.

Luckily the wind was blowing east across the Pacific in the first several days, taking 80 percent of the fallout with it....deposited in the Pacific Ocean.....wind changed..... large areas of Japan, ..Tokyo..severely contaminated. Approximately 2 million people are still living in highly contaminated areas in the Fukushima Prefecture and elsewhere,

...unprecedented quantity of highly radioactive water was also released into the Pacific Ocean. .. hasn’t stopped. ... 300 tons of this water has been leaking into the Pacific every day since ...30 months ago...so far 270,000 tons of water.

....three molten cores, each weighing 120 to 130 tons....melted..through 6 inches of steel in the reactor vessels...now either sit on concrete floors of ..cracked containment buildings or..melted their way into the earth..... ‘A Melt Through to China Syndrome

..reactor complex was built upon an ancient river bed located at the base of a mountain range,.. water..from the mountains (1,000 tons daily) are circulating around..cores absorbing..radioactive elements.

..concrete dam near the sea front to prevent this radioactive water from entering the sea....continuous flow of water built up..overflowed into the Pacific Ocean.

Each reactor core contains as much radiation as that released by 1,000 Hiroshima-sized bombs and contains more than 200 different radioactive elements, which variously last seconds to millions of years.


Children are 10 to 20 times more sensitive to the carcinogenic effects of radiation than adults, fetuses are thousands of times more so. One x-ray to the pregnant abdomen doubles the likelihood of leukemia in the baby. Females are also more sensitive than men at all ages. Radiation is cumulative, there is no safe dose and each dose received by a person adds to the risk of developing cancer.

Of great concern is the fact that 18 cases of childhood thyroid cancer in children under the age of 18 have already been diagnosed and 25 more are suspected in Fukushima. This is a remarkably short incubation time for cancer, indicating that these children almost certainly received a very high dose of iodine 131 plus other carcinogenic radioactive elements that were and are still being inhaled and ingested.

Thyroid cancer in Chernobyl victims did not appear for four years. Thyroid cancer is rarely found in young children.

Food in the contaminated zone will remain radioactive for hundreds of years ...continue to bio-accumulate radioactive elements from the soil, thus ...an increased incidence of cancer ..future Japanese generations.

Medical doctors in Japan are reporting that they have been ordered by their superiors not to tell the patients that their problems are radiation related.

Water and the Pacific Ocean
....TEPCO is still pumping hundreds of tons of salt water over molten reactor cores daily as another 1,000 tons of underground water also flows through the damaged reactors. .....TEPCO is pumping 300 to 400 tons of this highly contaminated water on a daily basis into 1,060 huge holding tanks adjacent to the reactor complex. These tanks now contain 350,000 tons of water and more tanks are being added each week to accommodate this endless flow of water....highly radioactive water is leaking and contaminating the tank site.

..the government will .. construct a wall of ice 0.9 miles (1.45km) in length and 100 feet deep behind and around the complex to prevent the mountain aquifer from rushing in to engulf the damaged cores.....the ice wall may not even be deep enough to block the water.....Not a good solution as the ice must remain intact for over 100 years.

... The whole reactor site sits on sodden ground, which has now become unstable, muddy and possibly liquefied......minor earthquakes each day..............quake greater than 6 or 7 on the Richter scale occur, it is likely that one or several of the buildings could collapse with absolutely disastrous consequences.

Endless Fukushima catastrophe: Many generations? health at stake ? RT Op-Edge


It's already gone through an M7+ EQ a few days ago, it might last long enough for the core removal job, but, I dunno....

At Fukushima Daiichi, amateurs left to clean up the mess
Jenny Uechi Posted: Nov 4th, 2013

Fukushima Daiichi workers interviewed in Gendai Business, a Japanese business magazine, remained anonymous for safety reasons as they expressed deep anxiety about being under-qualified and overworked at the Fukushima Daiichi disaster site. They said that the nuclear reactor situation is not under control, that amateurs and yakuza are working on the site without adequate guidance from the Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco).

Below are some excerpts I translated from the interview.

[B]Amateurs and yakuza at the plant[/B]

Worker A: Just the other day, we had six people exposed to radiation when contaminated water leaked while people were exchanging hoses, but the leaks are mostly due to really basic mistakes. I’d say 80 – 90 per cent is about human error.

Worker B: Worker morale at the site is really low. Especially because of the high turnover, there’s not really a sense of responsibility here. The people I’m working with right now, their jobs before coming to Fukushima Daiichi were positions like working at a pub in Shinjuku (a district in downtown Tokyo), a pool lifeguard, a cram-school teacher, and a truck driver. They’re all amateurs. There’s not one expert among them.

Worker B: They've got to increase the number of workers here. In particular, they've got to bring experienced workers back to Fukushima.

Worker C: There was one company partnering with Tepco that made a ridiculously low bid, and that triggered a huge deflation of Fukushima Daiichi's labour costs. Among the workers, there are guys who were sent in because they owe money to the yakuza, and some others are desperately poor yakuza without options. At the worksite, there's nothing but yakuza and total amateurs...

Worker B: There was a journalist* who wrote in his book that a tenth of the workers at Fukushima Daiichi were yakuza, but it's certainly true that yakuza types have been increasing...it's a reality that you can't get people gathered here without the help of gangs.

Worker D: In the first place, it's a mistake to let this company that never had a proper preparation plan to deal with the aftermath of the accident. Plus, they have a lot of pride, so they (the company) can't bow their heads and admit that the situation is untenable. Even though the contaminated water keeps increasing, the workers keep decreasing. Plus, even if there are policies to support children and victims of the earthquake disaster, there's nothing for the workers who have been exposed to radiation, so eventually, even the amateurs and yakuza will leave Fukushima Daiichi too.

Worker C: Among the workers, there are the commuters and the ones who stay overnight, but once you enter a small subcontracting company, you can get held back at the site for 16 hours a day. It's a place of long hours, low wages, no overtime pay.

*Tomohiko Suzuki, Yakuza to Genpatsu (The yakuza and the nuclear power plant) Bungei Shunju, 2011.


A lack of direction

Worker A: And even at the actual site, it’s incredibly rare that Tepco gives any kind of direct order. Or even if they do, it’s just like “Hurry up” or “We have no time.

Recently, Prime Minister Abe came here, but that was a huge inconvenience. Basically, Tepco told us, “We can’t let Mr. Abe see how dirty the site is. Clean up the rubble!” So we had to spend a whole week cleaning up. How stupid it is that we had to stall our work because of cleaning? What the Prime Minsiter saw isn’t the real Fukushima Daiichi.

I know at the time we got the Tokyo Olympics, Prime Minister Abe said, 'We’ve got the situation under control,' but I really wonder what he’s talking about. On the contrary, I think the workers that the general contractors have assembled (at Fukushima Daiichi) will eventually be taken away for Olympic-related construction. Prime Minister Abe is really too irresponsible.

Worker B: As for contaminated water leaking from the tank, there's no way to tell once it starts raining. I can't tell the difference if it's leaked water or just rainwater. As for the underground water, I can't even imagine. There's a lot of water in the gutter that clearly looks irradiated, but at first glance, it just looks like regular water.

Often I see the news report how many tons of contaminated water was leaking, but the number reported in the news is too low. When the hurricane recently landed, the huge amount of rain nearly caused the water in the gutter to leak, so we dumped all that in the ocean. I was chastised for not measuring the radiation levels first, but we purposely don't measure that. Depending on how high that registers, it would be a crime.
At Fukushima Daiichi, amateurs left to clean up the mess | Vancouver Observer

TEPCO Finally Admits Landslide At Fukushima Daiichi 10 Days Later
October 26th, 2013

TEPCO is now admitting publicly, a landslide at the plant that happened 10 days ago. We first heard of the landslide last week from former workers at the plant. The landslide happened as typhoon Wipha passed over the plant dumping considerable rainfall. The blocked road is one of the main roads into the plant. This shows not just the considerable vulnerability at Fukushima Daiichi, but at nuclear plants around Japan.

Nuclear plants such as Oi have only one road in and out of the plant. A landslide could make those plants inaccessible. In September a landslide did just that at the Monju nuclear plant.

This risk is largely unaddressed at Japan’s nuclear reactors, a plant could have access completely cut off during a disaster. This long delay in admission by TEPCO is another reminder how there is an utter lack of transparency and that much goes on at the plant without public knowledge.
TEPCO Finally Admits Landslide At Fukushima Daiichi 10 Days Later | SimplyInfo

Just to follow on from the shortage of sardines this year along the west coast of America;


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Stunning vision has emerged of more than 2000 sea lions as well as about 30 humpback whales feasting on schooling anchovies off California's central coast.
The video filmed by Captain Tiffany Thomas on a Marine Life Studies expedition in Monterey Bay this week captured the humpbacks feeding cheek-to-cheek with about 2000 sea lions on the local delicacy.

In the footage, the sea lion pack moves quickly, surfacing and diving below the water again in near-perfect synchronisation.

Meanwhile, their giant counterparts lay their claim nearby, sending spurts of water tall into the air as they calmly navigate the water.

"This is so cool," an unidentified woman squeals in the background, as "Whiskie" the whale-spotting dog barks warily at the pack.

Marine Life Studies founder Peggy Strap said the bay had seen an influx of whale activity over recent months, with as many as 50 to 100 humpbacks calling in on any given day, along with thousands of sea lions.

"[Tuesday] was the most sea lions grouped together that we had observed," she said.

"It appeared as if you could walk across them they were so tightly bunched. It was an amazing sight to behold."

Marine Life Studies is a non-profit group advocating the protection of whales and dolphins, according to its website.

Whale, sea lion feeding frenzy filmed

Fukushima nuclear plant set for risky operation


A task of extraordinary delicacy and danger is about to begin at Japan's Fukushima nuclear power station.
Engineers are preparing to extract the first of thousands of nuclear fuel rods from one of the wrecked reactor buildings.

This is seen as an essential but risky step on the long road towards stabilising the site.

The fuel rods are currently in a precarious state in a storage pool in Unit 4.
This building was badly damaged by an explosion in March 2011 following the Great Tohoku earthquake and tsunami.

Moving the rods to safety is a high priority but has only become possible after months of repair work and planning.
One senior official told me: "It's going to be very difficult but it has to happen."

When I visited Fukushima eight months ago, reactor building 4 was in a terrible state: a shattered concrete skeleton, terrifying to look at.
Today it has been transformed. A massive steel structure now envelopes the old building. Inside, I was able to look down into the deep green water of the cooling pool.

Clearly visible were the 1,500 uranium fuel rods - packed tightly together. Engineers have spent months carefully removing rubble and other debris from inside the pool.

Last month they did their first test, successfully pulling out one of the four-metre-long fuel assemblies. Now they say they are nearly ready to begin removing the rest.

It will be a difficult and delicate task and will take at least a year. But getting the 400 tonnes of radioactive fuel out of here into safe storage will be the first major step on the long road to making Fukushima safe.
The fuel rods are four-metre long tubes containing pellets of uranium fuel and the fear is that some may have been damaged during the disaster.

When the tsunami struck the Japanese coast, the flood swamped the diesel generators providing back up power to the reactors. Three of the reactors went into a state of partial meltdown.
By coincidence, Unit 4 was undergoing maintenance, so all of its fuel rods were being stored. But the meltdown of a neighbouring reactor led to a build-up of hydrogen which is believed to have led to the explosion in Unit 4.

In the days after the tsunami, there were fears that the blast had damaged Unit 4's storage pool and, in desperation, the authorities used helicopters and fire hoses to keep it filled with water.
A guiding principle of nuclear safety is that the fuel is kept underwater at all times - contact with the air risks overheating and triggering a release that could spread contamination.

So the operation to remove the rods will be painstaking.

A senior official in the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) told me that the rod assemblies will be lifted out in batches of 22 and in casks filled with water.
This will be done with a new crane, recently installed in the wrecked building, after the original one was destroyed.

Unit 4
Moving the rods has only become possible after months of repair work and planning
The task of removing each batch will take 7-10 days, I understand.

Two critically important issues are whether the rods themselves are damaged and therefore likely to leak and whether the casks remain watertight to ensure the rods have no contact with the air.
The METI official acknowledged the risks including a possible "release of radiation" from the fuel or if the casks holding the fuel are dropped.

He said that "countermeasures" have been prepared - including back-up wires to hold the loads and mechanisms to hold the fuel in the event of a power failure.

A briefing document released by the site's owners, Tepco, spells out a series of safety systems designed to minimize the dangers.
For example, the fuel pond itself has been strengthened while the new crane can handle loads of one tonne while the fuel cask only weighs 450kg.

Previous Fukushima problems

21 Oct: Radioactive water overflows a containment barrier after heavy rain
7 Oct A plant worker accidentally switches off power to pumps used for cooling damaged reactors
3 Oct Tepco says there is a radioactive water leak after workers overfill a storage tank
21 Aug Japan's nuclear agency upgrades Fukushima alert level
20 Aug Tepco says 300 tonnes of radioactive water has leaked from a storage tank into the ground
July Tepco for the first time admits radioactive water is going into the sea
June Tepco says radioactive water leaking from a storage tank to the ground
April Tepco suspects a fresh radioactive water leak at Fukushima
March Tepco suspects a rodent may have been behind a power cut that shut down cooling systems
Dec 2011 Contaminated water leaks from a treatment system, caused by a crack in the foundation
Collision tests, it is said, have shown that even if the fuel cask is dropped, it may be deformed but its seals will not be broken.

The fuel rods will then be deposited into a new "common" pool with a cooling system.

According to the METI official, "the common pool is planned to be used over a long period, supposedly for 10 to 20 years, and will be reinforced against possible future earthquakes and tsunamis".

The Tepco document says the rods will be checked for signs of damage - large amounts of debris fell into the pool during the disaster so the risks are real.
It says that checks for corrosion have found only minor signs so far - with "no corrosion affecting fuel integrity".

But only when the operation begins will engineers get a detailed look at the rods and a chance to assess their state.

One senior figure in Japan's nuclear watchdog told me: "Inspections by camera show that the rods look OK but we're not sure if they're damaged - you never know."
He said Unit 4 presented particular dangers because its entire stock of fuel rods was in the pool at the time of the accident.

If the operation goes as planned, attention will then focus on the massive challenges posed by Units 1, 2 and 3.

According to the METI official, the latest investigations have shown that despite the meltdowns experienced by each reactor, their temperatures have now stabilised.

In Units 1 and 2, readings show the presence of water in what's called the primary containment vessel - suggesting that the melted fuel rods have not penetrated that safety barrier.
The radiation level is too high in Unit 3 for that kind of examination to be carried out but using data from the reactor pressure vessel the official assumes that water is also present in the primary containment.

Meanwhile, the site continues to be plagued by leaks of radioactive water flowing into the Pacific Ocean.

Tepco will not confirm the precise timing of the fuel rod operation but after so much public outrage at the company's handling of the crisis so far, scrutiny of this latest episode will be intense.

BBC News - Fukushima nuclear plant set for risky operation