Previous ArticleTemperature in Fukushima plant’s No. 2 reactor remains high
February 08, 2012
By NOBUTARO KAJI / Staff Writer
Radioactive cesium likely from the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant has sunk more than 20 centimeters deep in the mud of the seabed in Tokyo Bay, according to a scientist.
While it is known that more than 90 percent of cesium deposits remain in the uppermost 5-cm layer of soil on land, Hideo Yamazaki, a professor of environmental analysis at Kinki University, said he found that seabed cesium concentrations peaked at much greater depths at one location.
"The accelerated sinking has favorable effects on maritime contamination," Yamazaki said.
Last August, Yamazaki sampled seabed mud at four locations near the mouth of Arakawa river in Tokyo Bay. He said his analysis confirmed the presence of radioactive cesium in depths of 24-26 cm at one location.
The cesium concentrations peaked at depths of 12-14 cm at another location.
The cesium deposit had a maximum density of 18,242 becquerels per square meter. That is 25 times greater than the peak cesium density in the mud in Lake Biwako, Shiga Prefecture, due to fallout from atmospheric nuclear tests in the past.
The maximum cesium density in Tokyo Bay is slightly less than 30 percent of the equivalent of 0.23 microsievert per hour, a radiation level used as a threshold for decontamination efforts on the ground, Yamazaki said.
Tokyo Bay has a large population of benthos, or organisms living in the seabed mud. Yamazaki hypothesizes that cesium sank deep because the benthos ate mud on the seabed surface and discharged excrement deeper in the mud.
It would normally take 10-20 years for contaminants to sink more than 20 cm because mud builds at an annual rate of 1-2 cm at the measurement locations.
Large amounts of cesium flow in from rivers and accumulate on the seabed. The rate of that process will peak 1-2 years from now, Yamazaki said. By NOBUTARO KAJI / Staff Writer http://ajw.asahi.com/articl...shima/AJ201202080058
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07:31 PM
phonedawgz Member
Posts: 17091 From: Green Bay, WI USA Registered: Dec 2009
If it wasn't possible, then why did Tepco take any precautions? You don't build AAA emplacements for flying unicorns, and you don't take criticality precautions, if its only possible by "magic".
I understand that your reading comprehension is quite low. I have wondered if that is just natural for you or because of your one track mind of what you pre-assume must be happening.
Here is what I said
quote
Originally posted by phonedawgz:
How do you propose that the core remains are physically, or magically reforming into a structure that supports using the water as a moderator and then reforming back into one that does not, and then reforming back into one that again supports it? Do you think the core is by itself forming a metal/water matrix that simulates the core? Why do you think the melted core didn't just collect at the bottom of whatever container the core has dropped into, as would have been commonly expected?
Is it possible that the core collected in some physically arrangement that could support the core remains moderated by the water to go critical? Remote but possible.
Could it be that the change in coolant flow could have dislodged something to cause the remains again moderated by the water to go critical? Again quite remote but possible
Could the core remains be going through multiple rearrangements by itself to go in and out of criticality and that criticality to only be detected in the sludge in a city hundreds of miles away? I can't possibly imagine how that could happen.
Can commercial power - low level uranium go critical without a moderator? No
Would I have also chosen to inject boric acid at the remote possibility that something was happening inside the reactor? Yep - there is only an remote upside and no downside to injecting the acid.
Did the core remains somehow have a re-criticality event? From all indications the answer is no.
So answer the question. How do you possibly propose that the core could possibly be going in and out of criticality now that you understand a moderator is needed for low level uranium to go critical?
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08:26 PM
dennis_6 Member
Posts: 7196 From: between here and there Registered: Aug 2001
Is it possible that the core collected in some physically arrangement that could support the core remains moderated by the water to go critical? Remote but possible.
Could it be that the change in coolant flow could have dislodged something to cause the remains again moderated by the water to go critical? Again quite remote but possible
Could the core remains be going through multiple rearrangements by itself to go in and out of criticality and that criticality to only be detected in the sludge in a city hundreds of miles away? I can't possibly imagine how that could happen.
Can commercial power - low level uranium go critical without a moderator? No
Would I have also chosen to inject boric acid at the remote possibility that something was happening inside the reactor? Yep - there is only an remote upside and no downside to injecting the acid.
Did the core remains somehow have a re-criticality event? From all indications the answer is no.
So answer the question. How do you possibly propose that the core could possibly be going in and out of criticality now that you understand a moderator is needed for low level uranium to go critical?
How many times do you have to be told their are 7 factors that determine if fuel goes critical or not? Not all of them are required for criticality to happen, and a moderator is only one. I understand the need for you try and make me look stupid, to somehow attempt to fool members of this forum into believing you were not wrong. However, unlike you, I don't think they are that stupid.
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11:05 PM
Feb 9th, 2012
phonedawgz Member
Posts: 17091 From: Green Bay, WI USA Registered: Dec 2009
(Reuters) -A scare over temperatures rising near danger level in a reactor at Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, where workers are battling to prevent a resurgence of the radiation crisis, could be a false alarm, the plant operator said on Monday.
Instruments showed the temperature inside the plant's No.2 reactor topped 90 Celsius on Monday, double what it was a month ago and close to boiling point, in which water cooling nuclear fuel in the reactor could evaporate and start a new meltdown.
But a faulty thermometer was likely giving false readings, said Tokyo Electric Power Co, operator of the plant 240 km (150 miles) northeast of Tokyo.
The Fukushima plant's cooling system was wrecked by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, triggering reactor meltdowns and a radiation crisis that has caused widespread contamination and mass evacuations.
Tokyo Electric, or Tepco, said it was able to bring the temperature down at two other places in the reactor to about 33C from over 40C a week ago by pumping more water into it.
"Following our cooling efforts temperatures at the two other locations are declining steadily while that at the location in question keeps rising. This leads us to think that the thermometer at the location in question is not functioning properly, rather than the actual temperature rising," Junichi Matsumoto, Tepco's general manager, told reporters on Monday.
Matsumoto said there was little sign of steam, which would be produced when water is at such a high temperature, and Tepco believes the reactor is still in cold shutdown, meaning temperatures are stable below boiling point.
The government announced on December 16 that the plant's reactors had reached a state of cold shutdown, a milestone in cleanup efforts and a pre-condition for allowing about 80,000 residents evacuated from a 20-km (12-mile) radius of the plant to return home.
Environment Minister Goshi Hosono said he believed the plant was still in cold shutdown but warned against complacency.
"The instruments are showing readings that are difficult to understand but I believe we don't have to change our view that the plant is in cold shutdown," Hosono said in parliament.
"Nevertheless we continue to assess the situation ready for all possibilities."
Glitches continue to dog Tepco nearly a year after the disaster. Heat is not the only problem the utility and its workers have to battle -- sub zero winter temperatures have frozen many parts of the miles of hastily installed plastic pipes at the plant, creating ruptures and causing the radioactive water they carry to leak.
Shattered trust in the safety of nuclear energy has prevented the restart of reactors elsewhere shut for routine maintenance, straining power supply and threatening blackouts.
Only three of Japan's 54 nuclear reactors are now operating. Without approval for restarts, all of them could be shut by the end of April, boosting the use of fossil fuels and adding over $30 billion a year to the nation's energy costs, a government estimate said.
A visiting team of U.N. nuclear experts has backed stress tests aimed at showing Japan's nuclear plants can withstand the sort of disasters that devastated Fukushima Daiichi.
(Reporting by Shinichi Saoshiro; Editing by Michael Watson)
Published: February 13th, 2012 at 11:22 pm ET By ENENews Email Article Email Article 14 comments
Title: Result of nuclide analysis of the accumulated water on the basement of Turbine Building 3U and 4U Fukushima Daiichi NPS Source: Tepco Date: Feb 13, 2012
Reactor No. 3 Turbine Building
Cs-134 @ 85,000 Bq/cm3 Cs-137 @ 110,000 Bq/cm3
Total Cesium @ 195,000 Bq/cm3 or 195 million Bq/liter
TEPCO announced on February 13 that the thermocouple on the bottom of the Reactor 2 Pressure Vessel at Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant, which had been showing the rising temperature, exhibited the abnormal temperatures after the inspection in the afternoon on February 13, at one time going overscale over 400 degrees Celsius which is the limit.
TEPCO thinks it is "most certainly broken". The thermocouple had been exposed to high temperature from the core meltdown, and has been in the high humid condition [inside the Reactor 2 Containment Vessel].
TEPCO conducted the test of the electric circuit of the thermocouple from the central control room from 2PM. The electrical resistance was higher than normal, which would result in the temperature indicated by the thermocouple higher [than the actual temperature]. Right after the test, the temperature showed 342 degrees Celsius, and it rose sharply at one time and went overscale.
The thermocouple is a bi-metal sensor to detect temperature. It produces a voltage when it is heated. It is possible that an abnormality occurred in the circuit which caused the voltage to change, resulting in the extreme measurements displayed.
In the press conference yesterday, TEPCO's Matsumoto said it was a copper-constantan thermocouple. Constantan is a copper-nickel alloy.
I was watching the press conference live, and was quite amused that TEPCO's Matsumoto and the junior PR manager were rather put off and irritated at some of the senior journalists who kept asking tough questions. They are not the usual fixture these days at TEPCO's press conferences.
These journalists, unlike the regulars (dwindling number, these days) who are mostly young boys and girls in their 20s and early 30s at most who hunch over their laptops and ask questions from behind the laptop display screen while they type, looked straight into Matsumoto, and ask questions with a pen in hand and a notebook on the desk.
Old fashioned way of journalism, which I thought was refreshingly effective. You have to knock TEPCO's PR people out of their kilter to get an edge and draw answers which TEPCO didn't intend to give.
As I mentioned in my post reporting the press conference, Matsumoto was particularly announced by the 2 questions:
One was posed by a reporter from Yomiuri Shinbun (he's a regular). The reporter asked if the test itself broke the thermocouple. (Bingo...) Matsumoto denied the possibility, saying the test was conducted distantly from the central control room, not at the thermocouple (no way, as it is inside the CV).
The other was posed by an independent journalist who kept asking Matsumoto if TEPCO was consulting the manufacturer of the thermocouple for insight and technical assistance. That really set off Matsumoto, who immediately said TEPCO was fully capable of the maintenance of the thermocouples at the plant. Despite repeated questions, Matsumoto refused to give the name of the manufacturer or whether the representative of the manufacturer was on hand at Fukushima I Nuke Plant.
Never mind that this is not an ordinary maintenance of the thermocouples in a functioning reactor.
Posted by arevamirpal::laprimavera at 12:45 PM Labels: Reactor No.2, RPV, TEPCO, thermocouple
Almost a year after the crisis at Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant following the March 11, earthquake and tsunami, one serious question remains: to what extent have residents in the vicinity of the plant been exposed to radiation?
As recently as January, it was reported that a new condominium had been constructed with materials containing a high concentration of radioactive cesium, affecting those living there. This was the latest piece of evidence testifying to the degree of radioactive contamination caused by the nuclear crisis.
Although the government has been trying to pacify citizens by claiming there is no immediate threat to human health as a result of exposure to radiation, medical experts are deeply concerned about children and their exposure and the potential hazard to their health.
Even though the area contaminated by radioactive fallout from the Fukushima plant is smaller than the region contaminated by the Chernobyl disaster (1986), radiation levels in some places are similar. A medical doctor working in the contaminated area has said the government has been moving much too slowly to cope with the situation. The pace has been compared to that of the government of the former Soviet Union in its dealing with the Chernobyl disaster.
Two chemical elements that could seriously expose children to radiation are iodine-131 and cesium-137. If iodine-131 is taken into the thyroid gland, it remains there for a long time, damaging adjacent tissues through beta decay (by which a beta particle, an electron or a positron, is emitted from an atom). This volatile element can spread quickly to other areas.
And since its half-life (the time it takes for radioactive material to decay by half) is only eight days, it disappears within months, making it difficult to detect unless a medical test is conducted at an early stage of exposure.
The amount of iodine-131 detected in the area within 20 km of the ill-fated nuclear plant reached a maximum 55,000 becquerels per square meter, yet 2,5 million becquerels was detected per kilogram of weeds collected in Iidate Village. Radiation figures in some places are not much different from measurements of contamination near Chernobyl.
The municipal hospital at Minami-Soma, about 30 km from the nuclear plant, measured 100,000 counts per minute on clothing from some patients.
Tomoyoshi Oikawa, a doctor at the hospital, has complained that even though he has time and again talked about the exposure of patients to high-level radiation, most media has not reported his findings.
In Chernobyl, an estimated 6,000 children suffered from thyroid gland cancer. This suggests that, proportionately, it won't be surprising if several hundred children in Fukushima Prefecture are affected similarly. Although this cancer is curable if treated at an early stage, victims remain subject to the aftereffects of operations or radiation treatments for years to come.
Another source of radiation exposure besides iodine-131 is cesium-137, which, if taken internally, will spread throughout the body, damaging tissue, primarily muscle, through beta decay. Although some scientists dismiss the likelihood of cesium-137 causing cancer, the fact is that little scientific research has been done on the matter.
A Ukrainian researcher is quoted as saying that although he does not know of any increase in the number of cancer patients as a result of the cesium-137 that leaked from the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, he doesn't believe the Soviet Union, which was on the verge of political collapse at the time, made an honest effort to publicize relevant data.
Yury Bandazhevsky, an anatomic pathologist in Belarus, who concluded from research that cesium-137 adversely impacts human blood-forming and immunity functions, was imprisoned, though on a charge unrelated to his work.
Medical checks by the Minami-Soma Municipal Mospital using Whole Body Counters (WBCs) show the seriousness of radiation exposure. Of the 527 children checked in and after September, 268, or 51 percent, were found to have suffered from internal exposure to cesium-137. One doctor at the hospital said some of the children had been eating wild plants picked in the mountains. Evidence of high-level exposure to gamma rays was detected in the clothes of some children, indicating, he said, that their parents were paying little attention to the risks of radiation exposure.
The municipal hospital is capable of examining and treating only 110 children per day due to the small number of WBC machine's available. Efforts by the hospital staff to purchase more equipment has been hindered by an internal power struggle within the municipal government. Minami-Soma Mayor Katsunobu Sakurai's call for buying additional machines has met opposition from city office workers who harbor antipathy toward the mayor.
The Fukushima prefectural government is not helping the hospital, either. Even though a large budget has been allocated by the central government to the prefecture to cope with radiation issues, no funds have gone to the Minami-Soma Municipal Hospital for purchasing the WBC devices. This has forced the municipal government to bear the entire cost of examining the children exposed to cesium-137. As it examines more children, it incurs greater costs.
Not only citizens of Minami-Soma but also those from other municipalities in Fukushima Prefecture have expressed a desire to be examined by the WBC machines. In reality, though, only a small number of them have had the chance.
As the prefectural government continues to drag its feet, several municipalities like Fukushima City, Iwaki City and Hirata Village, as well as some private medical institutions, have decided that they can no longer wait and are working to purchase the devices on their own.
It may be wrong to overemphasize the danger of exposure to radiation, but it appears inevitable that at least some children living in the vicinity of the Fukushima nuclear power plant will face health hazards in the future. The risk will only worsen if administrative officials fail to perform their duties or obstruct efforts by hospitals and doctors.
It is imperative that incompetent and dilatory bureaucrats within the prefectural and municipal governments be removed so that a medical system that contributes to the protection of the health of local residents is established. The entire country must support medical services for citizens of Fukushima Prefecture.
Nothing would constitute a more serious "man-made calamity" than destroying the future of children through the egotistic games of grown-ups. This is an abridged translation of an article from the February issue of Sentaku, a monthly magazine covering Japanese political, social and economic scenes. http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/eo20120214a1.html
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02:08 AM
phonedawgz Member
Posts: 17091 From: Green Bay, WI USA Registered: Dec 2009
Yes the reactors are being heated by the cores. It has been that way since the beginning. The temp changes on 3 and 5 are fairly minor. Since the change on reactor 2 is only on one sensor it makes one wonder if it is just a bad sensor or something else.
---------------- I believe you need to apologize to members of this forum for misleading them, phonedawgz. Tepco was taking precautionary moves to prevent criticality, which you said could only happen by "magic". Also, a while back when they were detecting Xenon, you were arguing that it was just a decay product, and not a sign of criticality. Finally, if it was just a gauge malfunction, Tepco would be the first to scream that possibility, gauge malfunction is their most used excuse.
To correct your misquote I asked what magic you thought was happening to the core to cause it to physically or otherwise be changed it to supposedly repeatedly go in and out of criticallity as you have claimed multiple times during this thread.
quote
Originally posted by dennis_6:
Show me where I said the core remains critical, I said the core may be going critical time to time. Until they actually find the core, it remains to be seen if its even in the drywell. It may even be in the ground.
quote
Originally posted by phonedawgz:
So again what is it that you think is occurring mechanically or magically that is causing the melted core to go in and out of criticality? And to answer my question, clearly you have as usual no idea of what you are talking about. And as usual the fact that you don't doesn't slow you down the least.
So again you have made posts that try to state the remains have gone critical, and again it appears you have been incorrect with your jump to your preconceived conclusion
quote
Originally posted by dennis_6:
It takes a big man to admit he was wrong, liars never do.
So dennis_6......
[This message has been edited by phonedawgz (edited 02-14-2012).]
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08:35 AM
dennis_6 Member
Posts: 7196 From: between here and there Registered: Aug 2001
I love how you ignore that the gauge pegged immediately after Tepco's test. The part I underlined for you. I also love how you ignore the fact, Tepco took recent precautions against criticality. They wouldn't do that if, you were correct. Now stop making up your own facts.
[This message has been edited by dennis_6 (edited 02-14-2012).]
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10:27 AM
PFF
System Bot
phonedawgz Member
Posts: 17091 From: Green Bay, WI USA Registered: Dec 2009
According to your post it didn't peg immediately after the test. 342° C is no where near pegged for a temperature gauge in a nuclear plant. And at present it appears that the gauge is not pegged. According to your post it did go overscale only at one time
quote
Right after the test, the temperature showed 342 degrees Celsius, and it rose sharply at one time and went overscale.
You really do have problems with reading something and then actually understanding what it said.
What do you think it means that the gauge went high and moved around after the test, other than the obvious, that being the gauge is malfunctioning? Do you think this gauge is somehow indicating that the reactor has gone critical? ------ The fact that Tepco injected Boric Acid to eliminate any chance that the core remains could be going critical does not support your assertion that the core remains were going in and out of cricitality repeatedly.
You have yet to conger up any theory of how the core remains could be doing this.
[This message has been edited by phonedawgz (edited 02-14-2012).]
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11:29 AM
dennis_6 Member
Posts: 7196 From: between here and there Registered: Aug 2001
According to your post it didn't peg immediately after the test. 342° C is no where near pegged for a temperature gauge in a nuclear plant. And at present it appears that the gauge is not pegged. According to your post it did go overscale only at one time
You really do have problems with reading something and then actually understanding what it said.
What do you think it means that the gauge went high and moved around after the test, other than the obvious, that being the gauge is malfunctioning? Do you think this gauge is somehow indicating that the reactor has gone critical? ------ The fact that Tepco injected Boric Acid to eliminate any chance that the core remains could be going critical does not support your assertion that the core remains were going in and out of cricitality repeatedly.
You have yet to conger up any theory of how the core remains could be doing this.
If you had followed the story at all past your tepco says everything is fine, as always. You know the radiation is good for you line of logic, and nuclear power has never hurt anyone that didn't deserve it. You would have noticed the temps rose over time slowly to the 342, you would also know the gauge spiked or pegged way past 342 right after Tepco tested it. The spike proved it was defective according to Tepco. That is rather handy, don't you think?
As for criticality, you said it was impossible outside of magic. Tepco using boric acid, shows you are a moron.
[This message has been edited by dennis_6 (edited 02-14-2012).]
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12:51 PM
dennis_6 Member
Posts: 7196 From: between here and there Registered: Aug 2001
Title: Primary Containment Vessel of Unit 2 of Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, Sampling Result by the Gas Control System Date: February 14, 2012 By: Tokyo Electric Power Company
Sampling time: February 13, 2012, 16:24-16:54 (charcoal filter)
If you had followed the story at all past your tepco says everything is fine, as always. You know the radiation is good for you line of logic, and nuclear power has never hurt anyone that didn't deserve it. You would have noticed the temps rose over time slowly to the 342, you would also know the gauge spiked or pegged way past 342 right after Tepco tested it. The spike proved it was defective according to Tepco. That is rather handy, don't you think?
As for criticality, you said it was impossible outside of magic. Tepco using boric acid, shows you are a moron.
That would be pretty amazing in an unpressurized system.
Considering this event, at 3:22 am today, we conducted a sampling of gas in the Primary Containment Vessel of Unit 2 and have found that each of short half-life nuclide Xe was below detection limit (9.5 x 10-2Bq/cm3) and the criterion to judge re-criticality (1 Bq/cm3) and that there is no reaching criticality, and we have confirmed that there is no increase of radiation (Cs-134 and 137).
As for criticality, you said it was impossible outside of magic. Tepco using boric acid, shows you are a moron.
Wrong again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again.
Again - Do not state what you think I say. Remember you have significant reading and comprehension skills.
---- What I did say
quote
Originally posted by phonedawgz:
For enrichment at concentrations used in nuclear power plant fuel, a moderator is needed to produce a critical reaction level.
They use a lower level of enrichment so if the moderator is not present, the reaction can not be sustained. If the core melts and collects at the bottom of the vessel, or dry well, or into the ground, the fact that the nuclear fuel's low level enriched uranium is not interspersed with water keeps the fuel from going critical.
This is why a nuclear power plant can not explode like a nuclear bomb.
Fission is when the nucleus of an atom divides. The reactor is considered to be at a critical power level is when enough atoms divide producing neutrons that cause the same level of atoms or more to divide. Fission levels less than that are sub critical.
Again Fission <> Criticality
Non-thermal neutrons are much less likely to cause a uranium atom to fission. So without a moderator to thermalize the neutrons, the lower level enriched fuel can not go critical.
Trying to argue that a moderator is not needed for a critical reaction with nuclear power grade fuel violates basic nuclear engineering.
So unless you can explain how the fuel gets arranged so the water can act as a moderator, and then gets un-arranged, and then gets arranged again, you have not answered the question.
What mechanism do you think is happening that is making the reactor go in and out of criticality?
If you got a red mark for every time you mis-quote me you would have earned your ban a long time ago.
[This message has been edited by phonedawgz (edited 02-14-2012).]
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02:01 PM
dennis_6 Member
Posts: 7196 From: between here and there Registered: Aug 2001
If you got a red mark for every time you mis-quote me you would have earned your ban a long time ago.
Thats not the only thing you said. I love how you pick and choose. Nice. I wouldn't be talking about mis-quotes remember when you were trying to say, I was laughing at Japanese deaths? Yeah, that's right, you intentionally misquoted me. Then you waited a bit, and tried the same lie again.
[This message has been edited by dennis_6 (edited 02-14-2012).]
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04:39 PM
dennis_6 Member
Posts: 7196 From: between here and there Registered: Aug 2001
Your 'doctorates' are fringe wackos. They are trumped by the accepted nuclear physics community. The accepted nuclear physics community knows low grade uranium needs a moderator to thermalize the neutrons to achieve a critical reaction level. It looks like you have realized that you were wrong and the core remains can't just go critical by itself.
So now that you have finally accepted that a moderator is needed, I will restate my question.
How do you propose that the core remains are physically, or magically reforming into a structure that supports using the water as a moderator and then reforming back into one that does not, and then reforming back into one that again supports it? Do you think the core is by itself forming a metal/water matrix that simulates the core? Why do you think the melted core didn't just collect at the bottom of whatever container the core has dropped into, as would have been commonly expected?
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04:41 PM
phonedawgz Member
Posts: 17091 From: Green Bay, WI USA Registered: Dec 2009
Already addressed, and anyone past 2 brain cells can see what you inferred, and then see you trying to hide behind your wording. I am calling you on your inferred meaning. You were wrong, deal with it. Xenon is present, even tepco uses that as a basis for criticality.
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04:46 PM
PFF
System Bot
phonedawgz Member
Posts: 17091 From: Green Bay, WI USA Registered: Dec 2009
Xenon is present, even tepco uses that as a basis for criticality.
Again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again
Here is what Tepco ACTUALLY said about the Xenon level indicated
quote
Tepco press release
Temperature increase of the lower part of the Reactor Pressure Vessel of Unit 2 at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station
With regard to the temperature of the lower part of the Reactor Pressure Vessel of Unit 2 at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, since February 2, 2012, it has shown a gradual increase at one point in the part and therefore we have kept changing the water injection amount and monitoring the temperature. At 2:15 pm today, we confirmed that the temperature indicator has reached 82°C. As the temperature of the lower part of the Reactor Pressure Vessel was not below 80°C, at 2:20 pm today, we judged that it does not clear one of the "Conditions for operation"*2, which are provided in the Reactor Facility Safety Regulation*1.
When conditions for operation are not satisfied, as "Required countermeasures" *3, it is required to take countermeasures against the temperature promptly, in order to clear the conditions. We therefore injected water with boric acid as countermeasure to prevent from reaching re-criticality from 11:38 am to 1:50 pm today, and from 2:10 pm to 3:30 pm today we increased the water injection amount through the core spray system from approx. 6.9m3/h to approx. 9.9m3/h. We also adjusted the water injection amount through the reactor feed water system from approx. 7.2m3/h to approx. 7.5m3/h. as it showed some fluctuation.
Although the temperature indicator for the lower part of the Reactor Pressure Vessel of Unit 2 is increasing at the point, as there is only one point where the temperature is rising and with respect to other areas the temperatures tend to decrease due to the increase of water injection amount, temperature indicators around the Reactor Pressure Vessel and in the Primary Containment Vessel show decreasing and therefore the whole facility itself is presumed to be cooled, and we could assume that there is some water around the point at stake and that it cools down the point, judging from the relation between the entry pressure in the Primary Loop Recirculation System and the amount of water injection in the reactor feed water system, overall, we judge that cooling reactors works properly now.
Considering this event, at 3:22 am today, we conducted a sampling of gas in the Primary Containment Vessel of Unit 2 and have found that each of short half-life nuclide Xe was below detection limit (9.5x10-2Bq/cm3) and the criterion to judge re-criticality (1 Bq/cm3) and that there is no reaching criticality, and we have confirmed that there is no increase of radiation (Cs-134 and 137).
There is no significant variation of the values of monitoring posts around the site boundary of Fukushima Daiichi NPS and the consecutive dust monitors.
We will continue to the tendency of the temperatures, carefully.
*1 Reactor Facility Safety Regulation Based on Clause 1, Article 37 of Act of the Regulation of Nuclear Source Material, Nuclear Fuel Material and Reactors, it provides basic conditions to be satisfied for operating nuclear power stations safely and keeping it stable (operation management, fuel management, radiation management, emergency treatment, and facility management based on "Mid-term safety securing" etc.). It is approved by the national government.
*2 Conditions for operation Reactor Facility Safety Regulation provides necessary conditions such as the numbers of the permitted machines etc. or criteria of temperatures and pressures for securing multiple safety function for operating reactors and for keeping nuclear power stations stable and these are treated as conditions for operation. When there happen some malfunctions of equipment provided in the regulation and a nuclear power station can not clear the conditions temporarily, operators have to take required countermeasures.
*3 Required countermeasures Article 138 of Reactor Facility Safety Regulation provides that the temperature of the reactor pressure vessels shall be below 80°C and that if it rises over 80°C, operators shall take countermeasures against the rising and clear the temperature condition for operation.
You are as sad as Tepco. A. I posted a link that had the same levels and information you posted. B. Explain any xenon at all with its short half life. C. Explain how all the sudden Xenon indicates criticality, when in the past it was just a "decay" product. lmao. Moron.
[This message has been edited by dennis_6 (edited 02-14-2012).]
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08:04 PM
dennis_6 Member
Posts: 7196 From: between here and there Registered: Aug 2001
Possibility of Tepco to have broken the heating gauge on purpose Posted by Mochizuki on February 14th, 2012 · 2 Comments
Following up this article..Another heating gauge is showing increasing temperature
The heating gauge of CRD housing has been showing the same trend of temperature as the broken heating gauge. This thermometer is attached under the bottom of reactor.
Possibility of Tepco to have broken the heating gauge on purpose2
Until Tepco “tested” the heating gauge, those 2 showed the same trend. Just after their testing, the gauge started showing abnormal temperature.
Possibility of Tepco to have broken the heating gauge on purpose
From looking at the graph, both of the gauges of CRD housing and bottom of the reactor showed the same temperature until it reached 93.7 ℃.
Possibility of Tepco to have broken the heating gauge on purpose3
After the broken gauge made a huge leap, the survived gauge of CRD housing kept showing the steadily increasing trend.
At 23:00 2/13/2012, it went over 100℃, which denies cold shutdown.
The gauge of CRD housing had already been labeled as “broken” but there is no explanation why.
If they thought that was broken, it contradicts that Tepco was following after the heating gauge on the bottom of the reactor until 2/13/2012.
Ah dennis_6, YOU are the one trying to make the argument that the low level of Xenon detected is an indication of criticality, not me.
Tepco stated that the low level read indicates the reactor is not critical, and I see no reason to disagree with them.
But for sure, you appear to be more and more wacked out with every post you make.
You just ignored the previous article I posted, go to the link and tell me how both "defective" gauges were reading nearly the exact same temps, up until the "test". The charts on the link are pretty damning to Tepco, and your argument.
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11:10 AM
phonedawgz Member
Posts: 17091 From: Green Bay, WI USA Registered: Dec 2009
You just ignored the previous article I posted, go to the link and tell me how both "defective" gauges were reading nearly the exact same temps, up until the "test". The charts on the link are pretty damning to Tepco, and your argument.
Here is the real data of what has been happening with the temp sensors.
You can see the CRD housing temp has been wacked out since mid Jan. No the two temperatures do not in any way match, unless you carefully cut up the graph to select so it only selects the data that you have predetermined to be the true and ignore the rest.
Here is the real data of what has been happening with the temp sensors.
You can see the CRD housing temp has been wacked out since mid Jan. No the two temperatures do not in any way match, unless you carefully cut up the graph to select so it only selects the data that you have predetermined to be the true and ignore the rest.
Moron, that just proved what I said, the data proves a trend in two different sensors.
RPV Bottom Part (Wall Above Bottom Head) and CRD Housing Upper Part is the data you should be looking at. The other chart was not doctored. You are a liar.
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01:44 PM
phonedawgz Member
Posts: 17091 From: Green Bay, WI USA Registered: Dec 2009
A look at the Fukushima-Daiichi plant 10 months later
A faulty thermometer is likely to blame for rising temperatures inside a stricken nuclear reactor at the Fukushima-Daiichi plant, authorities said Monday, as Japan prepares to mark one year since a devastating earthquake and tsunami triggered a nuclear meltdown.
The plant's operators, Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) said temperatures inside the Reactor Pressure Vessel of Unit 2 have been gradually increasing since February 2 and on Monday hit a high of 89.2 degrees Celsius.
The reading is significant because an error margin of 20 degrees Celsius for the gauges takes the temperature well above 100 degrees Celsius, one of the pre-conditions for a "cold shutdown."Japan declared the shattered plant was in "cold shutdown" last December, a welcome milestone in a fraught battle to contain one of the world's worst nuclear disasters. Should we be concerned?
A nuclear expert agreed that a faulty temperature gauge inside the Unit 2 reactor is the most likely cause for the higher heat reading.
Michael Friedlander, a former senior operator at U.S. nuclear power plants, told CNN that the prospect of another catastrophic explosion at the Fukushima-Daiichi is "virtually zero." Scientists warn of Tokyo quake threat
"If the reactor was going to become critical it would have become critical in March of last year, not now," he said. Another possible, though less likely, explanation, according to Friedlander, is that re-routing of pipe work in the last month or so has inadvertently taken cooling water away from where it was needed. How has TEPCO responded? Under Japanese nuclear safety regulations, operators are obliged to begin cooling methods when temperatures rise above 80 degrees Celsius. Authorities at the Fukushima plant have been pumping more water and boric acid into the feed water system and into the core spray system in attempt to bring the temperature down. Boric acid is included in the water to mop up stray neutrons. TEPCO said the higher reading is at odds with temperatures taken at other points within the reactor which indicates that it's probably faulty. "Following our cooling efforts temperatures at the two other locations are declining steadily while that at the location in question keeps rising. This leads us to think that the thermometer at the location in question is not functioning properly, rather than the actual temperature rising," Junichi Matsumoto, TEPCO spokesman, said Monday. The company said it has also been analyzing gas levels within the building and says there's been no increase in radiation, or any other reading that would indicate that the reactor is heating up. TEPCO said it was continuing to monitor the situation. What happens if the temperature gauge is correct and the reactor is heating up? According to Friedland, one year on from the accident the amount of residual heat and radioactivity inside all three stricken reactors is relatively low. "In the worst case scenario, if they were to completely lose injection and lose the cooling impact, the water in there would heat up and at some point it would begin to boil. And at some point they would have to get rid of that heat, but we're talking about something that would transpire in a matter of days and weeks, not in a matter of minutes and hours," he said. He said the greatest risks the reactors now pose are to the environment, and that any threats to the surrounding area pale in comparison to the devastation already delivered. "The biggest real risk is that a pipe breaks and that hundreds of thousands of gallons of highly radioactive water ends up underground or ends up leeching back into the ocean or something like that. That's the real bottom line." What is the state of the stricken reactors? It's been almost one year since an 8.9-magnitude earthquake sent a tsunami on a collision course with the Japanese coast killing more than 15,000 people, wiping out whole villages and industries and threatening nuclear mayhem. A hydrogen explosion then fire at the Fukushima-Daiichi plant triggered a nuclear emergency on a scale not seen since the Chernobyl disaster in the Ukraine in 1986. Amid criticism that it was acting too slowly and indecisively in the face of disaster, TEPCO flooded three of its unstable reactors with water. It continues to do so while efforts continue towards long-term recovery. "The reactors are no more or no less stable than they were in April of last year. They fundamentally continue to be reliant on a feed-and-bleed cooling mechanism," Friedland said. The other three reactors at the plant weren't operational at the time of the disaster but they've since been shutdown, as have nuclear installations across the country. Where to now? It's a long road ahead, and one that the Japanese have acknowledged could take decades to navigate. "They have to get the spent fuel pools stabilized and that's largely done," Friedland said. "The next issue is going to be getting the fuel out of the reactors, the fuel that was in the reactors when the accident occurred. That's probably going to be four or five years in the making, maybe even longer," he said. The disaster displaced more than 100,000 people as far away as 40 kilometers (25 miles) from the plant. The levels of radiation in the area closest to the plant are still dangerously high. TEPCO faces a staggering clean-up and compensation bill and has been forced to accept public funding to stay afloat. On Monday, the Japanese government approved an extra injection of 690 billion yen ($8.9 billion) for the troubled utility. Tokyo threatens to withhold TEPCO aid However, trade minister Yukio Edano has threatened to block TEPCO's access to extra funds if the company doesn't grant the government sufficient voting rights.
Hey look at this more instrument failure... ------------------- Title: Radiation dose of the state of the nuclear reactor nuclear power plant reactor / Fukushima Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant Source: NISA via atmc.jp Date: Feb 20, 2012
Sunday, February 19, 2012 Prof. Yukio Hayakawa's Walk with his Survey Meter in Nagareyama-Kashiwa in Chiba Prefecture
流山-柏 garmin at EveryTrail
Radiation levels remain elevated in Kashiwa City in Chiba Prefecture. It was in Kashiwa that 450,000 becquerels/kg of radioactive cesium was found from the soil near the drain in the public space in the middle of the city. There is a strange (to me anyway) collaboration between the city and the citizen volunteers to decontaminate the city.
Before the Fukushima I Nuke Plant accident, the background radiation level in Kashiwa City must have been no higher than the average in Chiba, which was 0.03 microsievert/hour (see this site). Now, as Professor Hayakawa's walk shows, it is 10 times that in many locations. Contrary to a belief by some in Japan that there was no radioactive plume that went south from Fukushima through Ibaraki to Chiba, Tokyo and Kanagawa, these elevated radiation levels in Kashiwa City are the evidence that the plume did in fact come.
Posted by arevamirpal::laprimavera at 5:44 PM Labels: Chiba, Kashiwa, Nagareyama, Yukio Hayakawa
The aftershocks still hitting Japan One year after the tsunami, the Fukushima 50 speak for the first time, while a mother who spent days searching for her son tells why the scars remain Yuko Sugimoto wrapped up in a blanket stands in the middle of rubble, l two days after the catastrophic earthquake-triggered tsunami hit Japan Image 1 of 2 Yuko Sugimoto wrapped up in a blanket stands in the middle of rubble, l two days after the catastrophic earthquake-triggered tsunami hit Japan Photo: AP
By Danielle Demetriou in Japan and Nick Meo
7:00AM GMT 19 Feb 2012
Wrapped in a beige blanket and surrounded by sea-soaked debris, broken homes and smashed cars, Yuko Sugimoto had only one thing on her mind: how to find her four-year-old son. She had not seen him for more than 24 hours, since the tsunami had swamped almost half of the city of Ishinomaki in northeastern Japan – with her son’s kindergarten among the submerged buildings.
As Mrs Sugimoto’s eyes scanned the wreckage of her hometown, her haunting expression was captured by a photographer who she does not recall seeing. The result was an iconic image of the earthquake and tsunami that devastated Japan on March 11 last year, published in newspapers and magazines around the world.
Mrs Sugimoto was among the fortunate. Despite a harrowing three-day ordeal, she was eventually reunited with her son, Raito, at an evacuation centre.
Others were not so lucky. Nearly 6,000 people in the region were listed as killed or missing after the sea travelled miles inland into Ishinomaki, one of the worst hit communities in the disaster; overall in Japan, some 16,000 died and nearly 4,000 are still missing.
As the first anniversary of the disaster approaches, the photograph has lost none of its power – and despite the painful memories it evokes, Mrs Sugimoto is hopeful it will serve as a reminder of the tragedy to the outside world.
“When I look at it now, it reminds me of all the troubles we’ve had over the past year,” she says. “But I hope that when people see the picture, it will remind them of the tsunami and make sure they don’t forget what happened and what still needs to be done.”
With her bright smile and stylish clothes, Mrs Sugimoto, 29, appears to be a different person from the one in the photograph: but beneath her friendly façade, it is clear that the last year changed the lives of her family.
The home she built four years ago with her husband Harunori, 39, was destroyed in the tsunami, which swept away along with their pet dog and their personal belongings.
For months after the disaster, the family lived in shared accommodation with other survivors provided by her husband’s company before renting a friend’s house.
Serving tea in their new home – surrounded by snow-covered rice fields – she says: “We were lucky. We may have lost our home but my family has become even more precious to me. Perhaps we took things for granted a little before the disaster.”
It was shortly after lunchtime that the earthquake struck, just as Mrs Sugimoto, a drinks company employee, was getting into her car to visit a customer.
“The earthquake came before I switched on the engine,” she recalls, speaking quietly as her son plays with the new family dog. “It went on for a very long time. I was worried the car might turn over, it was such a strong quake.
“When it stopped, my first thought was that I must pick up my son. I was on the opposite side of the city, but I thought he must be feeling scared at the kindergarten after such a big earthquake.”
Straight away, she began driving back into town, taking numerous shortcuts to avoid heavy traffic, broken bridges and large riverside waves.
At one point she bumped into colleagues who urged her to turn around due to the tsunami warning – but she continued. “All I could think about was my son and how I could get to him. But I just couldn’t get to the kindergarten. It was impossible to get across town.”
As the tsunami swept into Ishinomaki, Mrs Sugimoto was still stuck further inland in traffic-clogged streets.
Then she received a message from her husband, working in another part of the city, confirming her worst fears: “He said the kindergarten area had been fully flooded and the building was under water.”
With flooded streets and debris blocking pathways, there was no way for Mrs Sugimoto to proceed into town to try to find her son, reach her husband, or return to their home, which was also under water. As a result, she spent a sleepless night in the car near an shopping area, with no electricity or phone service, trying not to think the worst.
“It was a very tough night. I didn’t know what had happened to the rest of my family. I found out after that my parents’ house had also been destroyed. But at that point, I was only thinking about my son. I didn’t sleep at all.”
At sunrise, she continued her search, abandoning her car to venture further into the disaster zone on foot – before she bumped into her husband.
There followed two days of searching. It was during this fraught time that a photographer from a Japanese newspaper captured Mrs Sugimoto’s image, as she scanned the wreckage in the hope that she might find some clue to Raito’s whereabouts.
“I was waiting for news about Raito from some other mothers and also my husband when the picture must have been taken. Someone must have given me a blanket, it was very, very cold. But I have no memory of the photograph being taken.”
It was not until sunset the following day that she and her husband tracked Raito down: he and his young classmates had been evacuated from the rooftop of his kindergarten to a university by Self-Defence Force troops.
“I read the list of evacuated names at the entrance three or four times as I couldn’t believe it was him at first. When we finally found the classroom he was staying in and saw him across the room, I couldn’t move. Tears were in my eyes and I couldn’t see a thing. I was just crying with relief.
“I found out afterwards that Raito had not cried at all during those days, he appeared quite empty of emotions and hadn't spoken at all. But when I held him for the first time, he cried a little.”
Eighty-five miles south of Ishinomaki is Fukushima, site of the nuclear power plant that provided many more indelible images of the disaster.
Four days after the tsunami, Japan’s Prime Minister Naoto Kan addressed a team of frightened nuclear engineers at the plant.
With cooling systems failing in the reactor cores, meltdown had begun and radiation levels were rising. The engineers’ employer, Tepco, was proposing to abandon the plant. The government stopped them, arguing that it could lead to a huge cloud of radioactivity that would force tens of millions of Japanese people to abandon their homes.
Speaking by videophone from Tepco’s Tokyo headquarters, Mr Kan told the engineers: “This is a very tough situation but you cannot abandon the plant. The fate of Japan hangs in the balance. All those over 60 should be prepared to lead the way in a dangerous place. Otherwise we are handing Japan over to an invisible enemy.”
Until now those engineers — known as the Fukushima 50 — have not spoken about the days they spent nursing the plant back from the brink of disaster. They have been praised as heroes but forbidden from speaking by Tepco, which has been subjected to withering criticism for its role in the disaster.
BBC researchers spent eight months persuading them to talk on camera, for a This World programme, revealing how close Japan came to total disaster.
Some admit they thought of escaping, terrified of an agonising death from radiation poisoning. Others described the improvisations they used when safety plans failed, and the risks they took working in heavily irradiated areas of the plant — entering in relays for no more than 17 minutes at a time to limit their exposure.
One who spoke on film was Takashi Sato, a reactor inspector. He recalls: “In the control room, people were saying we were finished. They were saying it quietly — but they were saying it. We felt we had to flee.”
This was when the prime minister made his video-phone appeal. Mr Kan told the filmmakers: “I thought withdrawal is out of the question. If they withdrew, six reactors and seven fuel pools would be abandoned. Everything melts down. Radiation ten times worse than Chernobyl will be scattered.”
He believed it would effectively have been the end of Japan.
Water-bombing the stricken plant from army helicopters was then attempted. The pilots knew that Soviet aircrew who had done this at Chernobyl later died of cancer.
But the wind was too strong for accuracy, and by now the US government was secretly planning to evacuate 90,000 citizens from Japan. What finally worked was Tokyo firefighters spraying sea water into the plant, showing great bravery. They had no training to deal with nuclear disasters, and weren’t sure how much radioactivity they were being exposed to.
The engineers now had a chance to get a constant flow of water to the reactor cores. Hundreds of workers who had been on standby laid pipes, working fast in case radiation levels spiked again. They didn’t know where the most dangerous radiation hotspots were.
“It was an emergency operation and we were in a hurry,” one said. “No one complained, we all understood. Even if it broke the rules, we kept quiet about it. I felt the weight of Japan’s future on my shoulders. I felt that I had to carry the flag of Japan.”
Nearly a year later, the company and the nuclear power industry have been widely questioned. What saved Japan when all the safety systems and back-up plans failed was the bravery of men who stayed at their posts, under the leadership of the plant manager, Masao Yoshida.
As one engineer says: “If Mr Yoshida hadn’t been there it would have been the end, I think.”
Meanwhile, in Ishinomaki, signs of the tsunami are becoming less visible: gone are the mountains of tsunami detritus, muddy scattered belongings and overturned cars.
Scars, however, remain: in place of the debris, there are vast swathes of cleared, flat concrete close to the seafront, areas once packed with homes and businesses but today uninhabitable.
Long-term reconstruction is the next phase, a situation replicated in countless coastal regions, with the focus shifting from emergency aid to finding funds to build new communities, with new housing, businesses and job opportunities.
For many, the Sugimotos included, the emotional scars will take longer to heal. “Raito has been very anxious since March 11 last year,” says Mrs Sugimoto. “At first, he vomited whenever he heard an earthquake or tsunami warning sound and he still doesn’t like dark places. He looks fine on the surface but there are troubles at the bottom of his heart.”
The iconic tsunami photograph, however, has proven to be a beacon of hope: “At first I didn’t like all the attention that came with the photograph, it made me feel uncomfortable,” says Mrs Sugimoto, who travelled to France last year for a photography festival as a result of the image.
“Now I’m very happy that the photograph was used and that it potentially stimulated aid and support from other countries around the world.”
'This World. Inside the Meltdown’ is on BBC 2, 9pm, Thursday
--------------- I love it when the truth trickles out, this is far different than the picture you have been painting, phonedawgz. Its been nearly a year, and its still not over.
[This message has been edited by dennis_6 (edited 02-20-2012).]
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01:00 PM
dennis_6 Member
Posts: 7196 From: between here and there Registered: Aug 2001
As the clock ticks down toward the first anniversary of Japan’s big nuclear accident last March, the press got its second peek at the state of the stricken Fukushima Daiichi plant. This account is based on a pool report of the tour, which was made available to foreign press. One striking fact was that many of the reactors are still off-limits, with radiation readings peaking at 1,500 microsieverts per hour – more than a thousand times what was normal pre-accident.
“It’s still too dangerous for workers to enter reactor No. 3,” said Yasuki Hibi, an engineer with Kajima Kensetsu who heads a team of 50 workers responsible for removing debris, in an interview at the command center inside the Fukushima Daiichi compound. Mr. Hibi said they have to limit work to two three-hour shifts per day.
Still, the message from plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. remains that the crippled reactors have been tamed.
“The plant has reached a state of cold shutdown,” said Takeshi Takahashi, Fukushima Daiichi’s new plant manager, who took over in December after his predecessor Masao Yoshida was diagnosed with esophageal cancer. “We will try to allow people (from surrounding areas) to return to their homes as early as possible.”
The inside of the command center was crowded with makeshift beds and cots, as well as hundreds of people in protective gear. The control room featured one large screen monitoring different parts of the plant, as well as the staging center at J-Village, a converted soccer facility just south of the plant. Another big screen showed exterior shots of the four most damaged reactors, while a bank of smaller screens routed feeds from Japanese TV networks.
Mr. Takahashi explained that Tepco’s main task is now to make sure the damaged reactors stay stable while the work of dismantling them progresses. “Our main challenge now is to remove the nuclear fuel from the reactors. It’s a technically very difficult problem, but we want to take it step by step,” he said.
Tepco has estimated it’ll be at least 10 years before it can even start removing the fuel – some of which is thought to have melted.
The reporters were taken on a tour of the reactors – starting with damaged units 1 through 4. The tarpaulin that covers reactor No. 1 made it impossible to see the state of the building behind it. The building for reactor No. 2 appeared undamaged, though it’s thought to be the source of much of the highly contaminated water that’s leaking from the plant.
Reactor No. 3 was a mess of tangled metal and appeared to have lost its top floor, after an explosion last March. Radiation readings peaked in front of that reactor, hitting 1,500 microsieverts per hour.
Reactor No. 4 appeared badly damaged but Tepco officials blamed that on the force of the explosion at No. 3. A dozen or so workers could be seen on the roof of that building. That’s near the location of the reactor’s spent-fuel pool – the pool of water where nuclear fuel rods are stored when they’re not active in the reactor. Since unit 4 had been undergoing major maintenance at the time of the disaster, all the reactor’s fuel rods were in the pool for storage, making it a particular concern for experts worried about the weight of the fuel in a building that may have been damaged by the magnitude 9 earthquake last March.
Behind the reactors were the pipes used for recycling contaminated water back into the reactors. Some of those pipes had previously sprung leaks, so workers had constructed a bank of earth around them to help prevent keep any more water that ran out from seeping into the sea.
On a ridge about 20 meters from the reactors stood around 100 new 1000-ton water tanks, used to store contaminated water from the reactors. A work crew was leveling land near the tanks to clear space for more. All the existing tanks will be full by some time in April, Tepco explained.
The Irish Times - Tuesday, February 21, 2012 Heroic risks of struggle to clean up Fukushima
AVID McNEILL in Fukushima THE JOURNEY to Fukushima Daiichi begins at the border of the 20km exclusion zone that surrounds the ruined nuclear complex, beyond which life has essentially frozen in time.
Spindly weeds reclaim the gardens of empty homes along a route that emptied on a bitterly cold, panicky night almost exactly a year ago. Shop signs hang unrepaired from the huge quake that rattled this area on March 11th, triggering the meltdown of three reactors and a series of explosions that showered this area with contamination.
Cars wait outside supermarkets where their owners left them in Tomioka, Okuma and Futaba, once neat, bustling towns that now take their place alongside the uninhabitable Ukrainian nuclear ghost town of Pripyat. Even birds have deserted this area, if the latest research is to be believed. The reason is signalled by a symphony of beeping noises from dosimeters aboard our bus on the way to the plant. As we drive with a party of Japanese journalists through a police checkpoint and into the town of Tomioka, about 15km away, the radioactivity climbs steadily, hitting 15 microsieverts per hour at the main gate to the nuclear complex. At the other end of the plant, where the gaping buildings of its three most damaged reactors face the Pacific Ocean, the radiation level is 100 times this high, making it still too dangerous to work there.
Inside the plant’s emergency co-ordination building, the air is filled with the sound of humming filters labouring to keep the contamination out. Hundreds of people work here every day, many sleeping in the makeshift beds and cots scattered throughout the building. Workers in radiation suits and full-face masks wander in and out. A large digital clock showing the current radiation reading inside the building dominates the wall of the central control room, where officials from operator Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco) huddle around computers.
“Our main challenge now is to remove the nuclear fuel from the reactors,” explains Takeshi Takahashi in his first interview since he took over as plant manager two months ago. “It’s a technically very difficult problem, but we cannot hurry and we want to take it step by step.”
His predecessor Masao Yoshida was forced to quit in December after being diagnosed with cancer – unrelated to his work, insists Tepco. Takahashi too looks drawn and exhausted but says he is satisfied with the progress being made in bringing the plant to “a state of cold shutdown,” meaning that radiation releases are under control and the temperature of its nuclear fuel is consistently below boiling point. The term is considered controversial. Engineers have only a rough idea of where exactly the melted fuel lies inside the damaged reactors, or of its exact state. The fuel is being kept cool by thousands of gallons of water that Tepco pumps onto the fuel every day and which it is struggling to decontaminate. Engineers are frantically working to build more water tanks, and create space to store them. On a ridge about 20 meters from the reactors is a huge field of gleaming 1,000-ton water tanks – about 100. A building crew is levelling land next to the tanks to make way for more. “In April the existing tanks will be full so they are trying to make more space,” admits a Tepco official. We are told to wear our full-face masks for the climax of the visit – a tour of the six reactors. Every inch of our bodies is covered and even in the subzero temperatures of Fukushima in February, it is unbearably hot. Thousands of men worked through last year’s summer heat of over 30 degrees in this protective gear, struggling to clear debris from the quake and tsunami and bring water to the reactors. “They were dropping like flies in the heat,” said one worker who spoke anonymously. “But they just had to keep going. They had no choice because no one else could do it.”
“The worst time was when the radiation was 250 Milisieverts (per year – the maximum, temporary government limit) and we couldn’t find people to do the work,” explains Kazuhiro Sakamoto, an onsite subcontractor. “We could only work in two-minute busts, when we were extracting cesium from contaminated water.”
Some of that work is clear onsite. The concrete building housing reactor 1, which was blown apart in the first explosion on March 12th, is now completely covered with a tarpaulin, a sort of giant condom designed to contain its radioactivity. As our bus drives slowly by the building, the beeping dosimeters climb to 100 microsieverts an hour. But as the most badly damaged reactor three into sight, its mess of tangled metal and steel gives off a startling reading of 1,500 microsieverts. Its cargo of lethal fuel includes plutonium and the roof of the building housing the reactor was blown off in the second explosion. “It’s still too dangerous for workers to enter reactor number three,” admits engineer Yasuki Hibi.
The state of reactor two, meanwhile, sparked some panic last week after Tepco reported that the heat of the fuel inside was climbing and apparently resisting efforts to bring it down. The nightmare scenario of another out-of-control reactor was briefly conjured up by the media before Tepco banished it by claiming faulty equipment. “We’ve identified the problem as a broken thermometer,” says plant manager Takahashi in response to repeated questions about the reactor. “I’m terribly sorry to everyone for causing so much concern.”
Tepco officials constantly apologise, drawing on the most profound Japanese mea culpa in the dictionary, which literally translates as “there is no excuse for what we have done.” The apologies have become perfunctory and ritualised, failing to douse public anger over the scale of the disaster, or some of the company’s sharp-elbowed tactics since it began.
Compensation has dribbled into the pockets of over 100,000 evacuees who have lost everything and are stuck in legal limbo, without homes or clear futures. In one now infamous incident, the utility argued against a compensation claim by a golf course operator, saying that radioactive materials from the nuclear plant belong to individual landowners, and are not the company’s responsibility. Lawyers for the Sunfield Nihonmatsu Golf Club, 45 kilometres west of plant, said they were “flabbergasted” by the argument.
But here at the Daiichi complex at least, the apologies seem genuine. Work here is hard, unrelenting and in the long term possibly fatal. The depth of feeling about this tragedy is etched on the faces of hollow-eyed managers like Takahashi, who live day and night in one of the world’s least hospitable workplaces. He says he is motivated above all by one thing: “We will try to allow people to return to their homes as early as possible.” It is a mammoth task. Japan’s government has admitted that dismantling the reactors and its 260-ton payload of nuclear fuel will take up to 40 years. Many people believe the government and Tepco will eventually be forced to recognise that the people who fled from this plant a year ago may not return for decades. In the meantime, the work at Fukushima Daiichi goes on. And on.
How the Yakuza went nuclear What really went wrong at the Fukushima plant? One undercover reporter risked his life to find out A satellite view of the Fukushima Nuclear Power plant after the massive earthquake and subsequent tsunami of March 2011 Image 1 of 3 A satellite view of the Fukushima Nuclear Power plant after the massive earthquake and subsequent tsunami of March 2011 Photo: GETTY IMAGES
By Jake Adelstein
11:30AM GMT 21 Feb 2012
On March 11 2011, at 2:46pm, a 9.0 magnitude earthquake struck Japan. The earthquake, followed by a colossal tsunami, devastated the nation, together killing over 10,000 people. The earthquake also triggered the start of a triple nuclear meltdown at the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant, run by Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco). Of the three reactors that melted down, one was nearly 40 years old and should have been decommissioned two decades ago. The cooling pipes, “the veins and arteries of the old nuclear reactors”, which circulated fluid to keep the core temperature down, ruptured.
Approximately 40 minutes after the shocks, the tsunami reached the power plant and knocked out the electrical systems. Japan’s Nuclear Industrial Safety Agency (Nisa) had warned Tepco about safety violations and problems at the plant days before the earthquake; they’d been warned about the possibility of a tsunami hitting the plant for years.
The denials began almost immediately. “There has been no meltdown,” government spokesman Yukio Edano intoned in the days after March 11. “It was an unforeseeable disaster,” Tepco’s then president Masataka Shimizu chimed in. As we now know, the meltdown was already taking place. And the disaster was far from unforeseeable.
Tepco has long been a scandal-ridden company, caught time and time again covering up data on safety lapses at their power plants, or doctoring film footage which showed fissures in pipes. How was the company able to get away with such long-standing behaviour? According to an explosive book recently published in Japan, they owe it to what the author, Tomohiko Suzuki, calls “Japan’s nuclear mafia… A conglomeration of corrupt politicians and bureaucrats, the shady nuclear industry, their lobbyists…” And at the centre of it all stands Japan’s actual mafia: the yakuza.
It might surprise the Western reader that gangsters are involved in Japan’s nuclear industry and even more that they would risk their lives in a nuclear crisis. But the yakuza roots in Japanese society are very deep. In fact, they were some of the first responders after the earthquake, providing food and supplies to the devastated area and patrolling the streets to make sure no looting occurred. Related Articles
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As the scale of the catastrophe at Fukushima became apparent, many workers fled the scene. To contain the nuclear meltdown, a handful of workers stayed behind, being exposed to large amounts of radiation: the so-called “Fukushima Fifty”. Among this heroic group, according to Suzuki, were several members of the yakuza.
The yakuza are not a secret society in Japan. The government tacitly recognises their existence, and they are classified, designated and regulated. Yakuza make their money from extortion, blackmail, construction, real estate, collection services, financial market manipulation, protection rackets, fraud and a labyrinth of front companies including labour dispatch services and private detective agencies. They do the work that no one else will do or find the workers for jobs no one wants.
“Almost all nuclear power plants that are built in Japan are built taking the risk that the workers may well be exposed to large amounts of radiation,” says Suzuki. “That they will get sick, they will die early, or they will die on the job. And the people bringing the workers to the plants and also doing the construction are often yakuza.” Suzuki says he’s met over 1,000 yakuza in his career as an investigative journalist and former editor of yakuza fanzines. For his book, The Yakuza and the Nuclear Industry, Suzuki went undercover at Fukushima to find first-hand evidence of the long-rumoured ties between the nuclear industry and the yakuza. First he documents how remarkably easy it was to become a nuclear worker at Fukushima after the meltdown. After signing up with a legitimate company providing labour, he entered the plant armed only with a wristwatch with a hidden camera. Working there over several months, he quickly found yakuza-supplied labour, and many former yakuza working on site themselves.
Suzuki discovered evidence of Tepco subcontractors paying yakuza front companies to obtain lucrative construction contracts; of money destined for construction work flying into yakuza accounts; and of politicians and media being paid to look the other way. More shocking, perhaps, were the conditions he says he found inside the plant.
His fellow workers, found Suzuki, were a motley crew of homeless, chronically unemployed Japanese men, former yakuza, debtors who owed money to the yakuza, and the mentally handicapped. Suzuki claims the regular employees at the plant were often given better radiation suits than the yakuza recruits. (Tepco has admitted that there was a shortage of equipment in the disaster’s early days.) The regular employees were allowed to pass through sophisticated radiation monitors while the temporary labourers were simply given hand rods to monitor their radiation exposure.
When Suzuki was working in the plant in August, he had to wear a full-body radiation protective suit and a gas mask that covered his entire face. The hot summer temperatures and the lack of breathability in the suits ensured that almost every day a worker would keel over with heat exhaustion and be carried out; they would invariably return to work the next day. Going to the bathroom was virtually impossible, so workers were simply told to “hold it”. According to Suzuki, the temperature monitors in the plant weren’t even working, and were ignored. Removing the mask during work was against the rules; no matter how thirsty workers became, they could not drink water. After an hour fixing pipes and doing other work, Suzuki says his body felt like it was enveloped in flames. Workers were not checked to see if they were coping, they were expected to report it to their supervisors. However, while Tepco officials on the ground told the workers not to risk injury, it seemed that anyone complaining of the working conditions or fatigue would be fired. Few took their allotted rest breaks.
Those who reported feeling unwell were treated by Tepco doctors, nearly always with what Suzuki says was essentially cold medicine.The risk of radiation exposure was 100 per cent. The masks, if their filters were cleaned regularly, which they were not, could only remove 60 per cent of the radioactive particles in the air. Anonymous workers claimed that the filters themselves were ill-fitting; if they accidentally bumped their masks, radiation could easily get in. The workers’ dosimeter badges, meanwhile, used to measure an individual’s exposure to radiation, could be easily manipulated to give false readings. According to Suzuki, tricks like pinning a badge on backwards, or putting it in your sock, were commonplace. Regular workers were given dosimeters which would sound an alarm when radiation exceeded safe levels, but it made such a racket that, says Suzuki, “people just turned them off or over and kept working.”
The initial work, directly after a series of hydrogen explosions in March, was extremely dangerous. Radiation was reaching levels so high that the Japanese government raised the safety exposure levels and even ordered scientists to stop monitoring radiation levels in some areas of the plants. Tepco sent out word to their contractors to gather as many people as possible and to offer substantial wages. Yakuza recruited from all over Japan; the initial workers were paid 50,000 yen (£407) per day, but one dispatch company offered 200,000 yen (£1,627) per day.
Even then, recruits were hard to find. Officials in Fukushima reportedly told local businesses, “Bring us the living dead. People no one will miss.” The labour crunch was eased somewhat when the Japanese government and Tepco raised the “safe” radiation exposure levels at the plant from pre-earthquake levels of 130-180cpm (radiation exposure per minute) to 100,000cpm.
The work would be further subcontracted to the point where labourers were being sent from sixth-tier firms. A representative from one company told Suzuki of an agreement made with a Tepco subcontractor right after the accident: “Normally, to even enter the grounds of a nuclear power plant a nuclear radiation personal data management pocketbook is required. We were told that wasn’t necessary. We didn’t even have time to give the workers physical examinations before they were sent to the plant.”
A former yakuza boss tells me that his group has “always” been involved in recruiting labourers for the nuclear industry. “It’s dirty, dangerous work,” he says, “and the only people who will do it are homeless, yakuza, or people so badly in debt that they see no other way to pay it off.” Suzuki found people who’d been threatened into working at Fukushima, but others who’d volunteered. Why? “Of course, if it was a matter of dying today or tomorrow they wouldn’t work there,” he explains. “It’s because it could take 10 years or more for someone to possibly die of radiation excess. It’s like Russian roulette. If you owe enough money to the yakuza, working at a nuclear plant is a safer bet. Wouldn’t you rather take a chance at dying 10 years later than being stabbed to death now?” (Suzuki’s own feeling was that the effects of low-level radiation are still unknown and that, as a drinker and smoker, he’s probably no more likely to get cancer than he was before.)
A recent report in Japan’s Mainichi newspaper alleged that workers from southern Japan were brought to the plant in July on false pretences and told to get to work. Many had to enter dangerous radioactive buildings. One man was reportedly tasked with carrying 20kg kilogram sheets of lead from the bottom floor of a damaged reactor up to the sixth floor, where his Geiger counters went into the danger zone. One worker said, “When I tried to quit, the people employing me mentioned the name of a local yakuza group. I got the hint. If Tepco didn’t know what was going on, I believe they should have.” Former Tepco executives, workers, police officials, as well as investigative journalist, Katsunobu Onda, author of TEPCO: The Dark Empire, all agree: Tepco have always known they were working with the yakuza; they just didn’t care. However, the articles Suzuki wrote before his book was published, and my own work, helped create enough public outcry to force Tepco into action. On July 19, four months after the meltdowns, they announced that they would be cutting ties with organised crime.
“They asked the companies that have been working with them for years to send them papers showing they’d cut organised crime ties,” Suzuki says. “They followed up by taking a survey.” Tepco has not answered my own questions on their anti-organised crime initiative as of this date; they’ve previously called Suzuki’s claims “groundless”.
The situation at Fukushima is still dire. Number-two reactor continues to heat up, and appears to be out of control. Rolling blackouts are a regular occurrence. Nuclear reactors are being shut down, one by one, all over Japan. Meanwhile, there is talk that Tepco will be nationalised and its top executives are under investigation for criminal negligence, in relation to the 3/11 disaster. As for the yakuza, the police are beginning to investigate their front companies more closely. “Yakuza may be a plague on society,” says Suzuki, “but they don’t ruin the lives of hundreds of thousands of people and irradiate the planet out of sheer greed and incompetence.” Suzuki says he’s had little trouble from the yakuza about his book’s allegations. He suspects this is because he showed they were prepared to risk their lives at Fukushima – he almost made them look good. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/...za-went-nuclear.html
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05:04 PM
dennis_6 Member
Posts: 7196 From: between here and there Registered: Aug 2001
Title: U.S. Was More Cautious in Japan Nuclear Accident – WSJ.com Source: Wall Street Journal Author: Peter Landers Date: Feb 21, 2012
Newly released transcripts of U.S. discussions shortly after Japan’s nuclear accident [...] show that the top U.S. nuclear regulator correctly projected, months before Japan acknowledged it, that the Fukushima Daiichi plant might be suffering from a triple meltdown. [...]
U.S. officials were particularly concerned about the plant’s reactor No. 4 [...]
“The explosion leveled the walls, leveled the structure for the Unit 4 spent-fuel pool all the way down to the approximate level of the bottom of the fuels. So, there’s no water in there whatsoever,” an NRC official said on March 16, according to the transcripts. [...]
“If this happened in the U.S., we would go out to 50 miles,” Bill Borchardt, the NRC’s executive director for operations, told NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko on March 16.
Japanese officials and plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. later concluded that damage to the No. 4 reactor’s spent-fuel pool was limited and said the fuel rods remained submerged throughout
Well this guy sure seems to have no problem making **** up.
quote
Originally posted by dennis_6:
How the Yakuza went nuclear What really went wrong at the Fukushima plant? One undercover reporter risked his life to find out A satellite view of the Fukushima Nuclear Power plant after the massive earthquake and subsequent tsunami of March 2011 Image 1 of 3 A satellite view of the Fukushima Nuclear Power plant after the massive earthquake and subsequent tsunami of March 2011 Photo: GETTY IMAGES
By Jake Adelstein
11:30AM GMT 21 Feb 2012
On March 11 2011, at 2:46pm, a 9.0 magnitude earthquake struck Japan. The earthquake, followed by a colossal tsunami, devastated the nation, together killing over 10,000 people. The earthquake also triggered the start of a triple nuclear meltdown at the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant, run by Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco). Of the three reactors that melted down, one was nearly 40 years old and should have been decommissioned two decades ago. The cooling pipes, “the veins and arteries of the old nuclear reactors”, which circulated fluid to keep the core temperature down, ruptured.
Approximately 40 minutes after the shocks, the tsunami reached the power plant and knocked out the electrical systems. Japan’s Nuclear Industrial Safety Agency (Nisa) had warned Tepco about safety violations and problems at the plant days before the earthquake; they’d been warned about the possibility of a tsunami hitting the plant for years.
The denials began almost immediately. “There has been no meltdown,” government spokesman Yukio Edano intoned in the days after March 11. “It was an unforeseeable disaster,” Tepco’s then president Masataka Shimizu chimed in. As we now know, the meltdown was already taking place. And the disaster was far from unforeseeable.
Tepco has long been a scandal-ridden company, caught time and time again covering up data on safety lapses at their power plants, or doctoring film footage which showed fissures in pipes. How was the company able to get away with such long-standing behaviour? According to an explosive book recently published in Japan, they owe it to what the author, Tomohiko Suzuki, calls “Japan’s nuclear mafia… A conglomeration of corrupt politicians and bureaucrats, the shady nuclear industry, their lobbyists…” And at the centre of it all stands Japan’s actual mafia: the yakuza.
It might surprise the Western reader that gangsters are involved in Japan’s nuclear industry and even more that they would risk their lives in a nuclear crisis. But the yakuza roots in Japanese society are very deep. In fact, they were some of the first responders after the earthquake, providing food and supplies to the devastated area and patrolling the streets to make sure no looting occurred. Related Articles
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Japanese TV star retires over yakuza links 24 Aug 2011
As the scale of the catastrophe at Fukushima became apparent, many workers fled the scene. To contain the nuclear meltdown, a handful of workers stayed behind, being exposed to large amounts of radiation: the so-called “Fukushima Fifty”. Among this heroic group, according to Suzuki, were several members of the yakuza.
The yakuza are not a secret society in Japan. The government tacitly recognises their existence, and they are classified, designated and regulated. Yakuza make their money from extortion, blackmail, construction, real estate, collection services, financial market manipulation, protection rackets, fraud and a labyrinth of front companies including labour dispatch services and private detective agencies. They do the work that no one else will do or find the workers for jobs no one wants.
“Almost all nuclear power plants that are built in Japan are built taking the risk that the workers may well be exposed to large amounts of radiation,” says Suzuki. “That they will get sick, they will die early, or they will die on the job. And the people bringing the workers to the plants and also doing the construction are often yakuza.” Suzuki says he’s met over 1,000 yakuza in his career as an investigative journalist and former editor of yakuza fanzines. For his book, The Yakuza and the Nuclear Industry, Suzuki went undercover at Fukushima to find first-hand evidence of the long-rumoured ties between the nuclear industry and the yakuza. First he documents how remarkably easy it was to become a nuclear worker at Fukushima after the meltdown. After signing up with a legitimate company providing labour, he entered the plant armed only with a wristwatch with a hidden camera. Working there over several months, he quickly found yakuza-supplied labour, and many former yakuza working on site themselves.
Suzuki discovered evidence of Tepco subcontractors paying yakuza front companies to obtain lucrative construction contracts; of money destined for construction work flying into yakuza accounts; and of politicians and media being paid to look the other way. More shocking, perhaps, were the conditions he says he found inside the plant.
His fellow workers, found Suzuki, were a motley crew of homeless, chronically unemployed Japanese men, former yakuza, debtors who owed money to the yakuza, and the mentally handicapped. Suzuki claims the regular employees at the plant were often given better radiation suits than the yakuza recruits. (Tepco has admitted that there was a shortage of equipment in the disaster’s early days.) The regular employees were allowed to pass through sophisticated radiation monitors while the temporary labourers were simply given hand rods to monitor their radiation exposure.
When Suzuki was working in the plant in August, he had to wear a full-body radiation protective suit and a gas mask that covered his entire face. The hot summer temperatures and the lack of breathability in the suits ensured that almost every day a worker would keel over with heat exhaustion and be carried out; they would invariably return to work the next day. Going to the bathroom was virtually impossible, so workers were simply told to “hold it”. According to Suzuki, the temperature monitors in the plant weren’t even working, and were ignored. Removing the mask during work was against the rules; no matter how thirsty workers became, they could not drink water. After an hour fixing pipes and doing other work, Suzuki says his body felt like it was enveloped in flames. Workers were not checked to see if they were coping, they were expected to report it to their supervisors. However, while Tepco officials on the ground told the workers not to risk injury, it seemed that anyone complaining of the working conditions or fatigue would be fired. Few took their allotted rest breaks.
Those who reported feeling unwell were treated by Tepco doctors, nearly always with what Suzuki says was essentially cold medicine.The risk of radiation exposure was 100 per cent. The masks, if their filters were cleaned regularly, which they were not, could only remove 60 per cent of the radioactive particles in the air. Anonymous workers claimed that the filters themselves were ill-fitting; if they accidentally bumped their masks, radiation could easily get in. The workers’ dosimeter badges, meanwhile, used to measure an individual’s exposure to radiation, could be easily manipulated to give false readings. According to Suzuki, tricks like pinning a badge on backwards, or putting it in your sock, were commonplace. Regular workers were given dosimeters which would sound an alarm when radiation exceeded safe levels, but it made such a racket that, says Suzuki, “people just turned them off or over and kept working.”
The initial work, directly after a series of hydrogen explosions in March, was extremely dangerous. Radiation was reaching levels so high that the Japanese government raised the safety exposure levels and even ordered scientists to stop monitoring radiation levels in some areas of the plants. Tepco sent out word to their contractors to gather as many people as possible and to offer substantial wages. Yakuza recruited from all over Japan; the initial workers were paid 50,000 yen (£407) per day, but one dispatch company offered 200,000 yen (£1,627) per day.
Even then, recruits were hard to find. Officials in Fukushima reportedly told local businesses, “Bring us the living dead. People no one will miss.” The labour crunch was eased somewhat when the Japanese government and Tepco raised the “safe” radiation exposure levels at the plant from pre-earthquake levels of 130-180cpm (radiation exposure per minute) to 100,000cpm.
The work would be further subcontracted to the point where labourers were being sent from sixth-tier firms. A representative from one company told Suzuki of an agreement made with a Tepco subcontractor right after the accident: “Normally, to even enter the grounds of a nuclear power plant a nuclear radiation personal data management pocketbook is required. We were told that wasn’t necessary. We didn’t even have time to give the workers physical examinations before they were sent to the plant.”
A former yakuza boss tells me that his group has “always” been involved in recruiting labourers for the nuclear industry. “It’s dirty, dangerous work,” he says, “and the only people who will do it are homeless, yakuza, or people so badly in debt that they see no other way to pay it off.” Suzuki found people who’d been threatened into working at Fukushima, but others who’d volunteered. Why? “Of course, if it was a matter of dying today or tomorrow they wouldn’t work there,” he explains. “It’s because it could take 10 years or more for someone to possibly die of radiation excess. It’s like Russian roulette. If you owe enough money to the yakuza, working at a nuclear plant is a safer bet. Wouldn’t you rather take a chance at dying 10 years later than being stabbed to death now?” (Suzuki’s own feeling was that the effects of low-level radiation are still unknown and that, as a drinker and smoker, he’s probably no more likely to get cancer than he was before.)
A recent report in Japan’s Mainichi newspaper alleged that workers from southern Japan were brought to the plant in July on false pretences and told to get to work. Many had to enter dangerous radioactive buildings. One man was reportedly tasked with carrying 20kg kilogram sheets of lead from the bottom floor of a damaged reactor up to the sixth floor, where his Geiger counters went into the danger zone. One worker said, “When I tried to quit, the people employing me mentioned the name of a local yakuza group. I got the hint. If Tepco didn’t know what was going on, I believe they should have.” Former Tepco executives, workers, police officials, as well as investigative journalist, Katsunobu Onda, author of TEPCO: The Dark Empire, all agree: Tepco have always known they were working with the yakuza; they just didn’t care. However, the articles Suzuki wrote before his book was published, and my own work, helped create enough public outcry to force Tepco into action. On July 19, four months after the meltdowns, they announced that they would be cutting ties with organised crime.
“They asked the companies that have been working with them for years to send them papers showing they’d cut organised crime ties,” Suzuki says. “They followed up by taking a survey.” Tepco has not answered my own questions on their anti-organised crime initiative as of this date; they’ve previously called Suzuki’s claims “groundless”.
The situation at Fukushima is still dire. Number-two reactor continues to heat up, and appears to be out of control. Rolling blackouts are a regular occurrence. Nuclear reactors are being shut down, one by one, all over Japan. Meanwhile, there is talk that Tepco will be nationalised and its top executives are under investigation for criminal negligence, in relation to the 3/11 disaster. As for the yakuza, the police are beginning to investigate their front companies more closely. “Yakuza may be a plague on society,” says Suzuki, “but they don’t ruin the lives of hundreds of thousands of people and irradiate the planet out of sheer greed and incompetence.” Suzuki says he’s had little trouble from the yakuza about his book’s allegations. He suspects this is because he showed they were prepared to risk their lives at Fukushima – he almost made them look good. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/...za-went-nuclear.html
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05:20 PM
dennis_6 Member
Posts: 7196 From: between here and there Registered: Aug 2001
Associated Press Radiation detected 400 miles off Japanese coast
By BRIAN SKOLOFF and MALCOLM RITTER, Associated Press
Tuesday, February 21, 2012 (02-21) 13:25 PST SALT LAKE CITY, (AP) --
Radioactive contamination from the Fukushima power plant disaster has been detected as far as almost 400 miles off Japan in the Pacific Ocean, with water showing readings of up to 1,000 times more than prior levels, scientists reported Tuesday.
But those results for the substance cesium-137 are far below the levels that are generally considered harmful, either to marine animals or people who eat seafood, said Ken Buesseler of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts.
He spoke Tuesday in Salt Lake City at the annual Ocean Sciences Meeting, attended by more than 4,000 researchers this week.
The results are for water samples taken in June, about three months after the power plant disaster, Buesseler said. In addition to thousands of water samples, researchers also sampled fish and plankton and found cesium-137 levels well below the legal health limit.
"We're not over the hump" yet in terms of radioactive contamination of the ocean because of continued leakage from the plant, Buesseler said in an interview before Tuesday's talk. He was chief scientist for the cruise that collected the data.
The ship sampled water from about 20 miles to about 400 miles off the coast east of the Fukushima plant. Concentrations of cesium-137 throughout that range were 10 to 1,000 times normal, but they were about one-tenth the levels generally considered harmful, Buesseler said.
Cesium-137 wasn't the only radioactive substance released from the plant, but it's of particular concern because of its long persistence in the environment. Its half-life is 30 years.
The highest readings last June were not always from locations closest to the Fukushima plant, Buesseler said. That's because swirling ocean currents formed concentrations of the material, he said.
Most of the cesium-137 detected during the voyage probably entered the ocean from water discharges, rather than atmospheric fallout, he added.
Hartmut Nies, of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said Buesseler's findings were not surprising, given the vastness of the ocean and its ability to absorb and dilute materials.
"This is what we predicted," Nies said after Buesseler presented his research.
Nies said the water's cesium-137 concentration has been so diluted that just 20 miles offshore, "if it was not seawater, you could drink it without any problems."
"This is good news," he said, adding that scientists expect levels to continue to decrease over time.
"We still don't have a full picture," Nies said, "but we can expect the situation will not become worse."
