Another quake-hit Japan reactor in trouble: operator

[tioliaohuat]

This interview from Democracy Now a couple of days ago:

SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: We go right now to Aileen Mioko Smith. She’s the director of Kyoto-based Green Action. She’s on the board of Greenpeace International. She’s joining us from San Francisco right now, one of Japan’s leading voices challenging nuclear power.

Welcome to Democracy Now!

AILEEN MIOKO SMITH: Thank you very much.

SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Can you tell us what you understand is happening right now in Japan in terms of the evacuation?

AILEEN MIOKO SMITH: Yes. By the way, I’m not a board member of Greenpeace International. I’m working with Green Action in Kyoto, Japan.

Right now, the evacuation is underway, and we’re very concerned about the people around the plants. I think that what we’re suffering very much right now in Japan is that the government only said a evacuation area within 10 kilometers, or six miles, was necessary. So, there’s nothing on the books about any evacuation to be undertaken beyond that limit. And I think that we are right now suffering from the fact that nothing was on the books to evacuate people beyond that area. I agree with Arnie Gundersen, what he just said, that evacuations should be a larger area right now. Thirty kilometers is not enough. That’s 18 miles. It’s not sufficient. It should be going on beyond that right now, so that people can be prepared for wider areas of radiation contamination.

We’re very concerned with the complete lack of environmental monitoring around the region where people are evacuated and where people need to be evacuating even further. And that was a concern of Japanese citizens way back. This plant, from the very start, even before it was built, citizens said that the land was not proper for building a nuclear power plant. There was opposition. There were lawsuits. And of all—in all the areas, 54 nuclear power plants in Japan, every area, citizens have fought siting, because of seismic concerns. So this is very much a man-made problem. People may think it’s a combination of man-made and human—natural disaster, but no plant should have been here in the first place.

SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Japan’s policy right now is to build eight more nuclear plants. What do you understand is happening with that right now?

AILEEN MIOKO SMITH: Well, right now, just the day before this accident happened, people were—citizens who had been opposing a plant site for 30 years down in Yamaguchi Prefecture, southwest of Osaka, were actually virtually in hand-to-hand combat with people who—with the utility who was coming in and trying to start a landfill in order to build a plant. Of the eight sites, they’re still supposed to be under construction and be built, but obviously that situation would change as of this week.

SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: And the information coming right now from the Japanese government, very little information, what do you understand they’re saying or they’re not saying?

AILEEN MIOKO SMITH: Well, I think that there are three things. One is that they themselves don’t really know what’s going on. But the other is, I think that they are trying to protect the public. I think it’s very important not to panic people, so the tone, which is very calm, is good and should remain that way. But they should be informing the public exactly all the things that they know and exactly all the things—admit to all the things that they don’t know. And I don’t think that they’re informing the public. I feel like—we really feel that the government is patronizing of the citizens. You can’t protect the people from reality. The reality is that the situation is very serious, and emissions could become much greater.

And I think that the public really needs to be warned that, carefully, and that evacuations should be leading the situation, not like the situation is really bad and then you delay and delay but then you evacuate a little bit. Actually, what you should be doing is initially start the evacuation and be quite proactive about it, and evacuate ahead of the problem versus evacuating as a result of things that have happened. And that’s not happening right now. So I think that they have to be very quick right now in initiating calm evacuation of a larger area.

SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: I want to turn back to Arnie Gundersen for a moment now, joining us from Burlington, Vermont. What is the significance of the removal of 750 workers from the nuclear plant? How will this affect the effort to prevent a meltdown?

ARNIE GUNDERSEN: It’s got to make the efforts worse. You know, these 750 people that are being evacuated were doing critical work. They weren’t sweeping floors and washing windows; they were doing critical work. So, when the staff, basically, is cut—90 percent of the staff is told, “You have to leave the site”—that’s an indication that a lot of critical work isn’t getting done. I really think it’s also—it’s an indication that management at the site has thrown in the towel and is going to let this thing run its course without any more human intervention. What that means is that—I’m particularly concerned about another aftershock, especially if an aftershock—on the weak Unit 2 containment, which already apparently has failed, and an aftershock would make it worse. The other thing that especially concerns me is that a large group of personnel were fighting the fire in the fuel pool on Unit 4, and again, you can’t have 60 people on a six-unit site and expect that anything gets done.

SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: There was the disaster at Three Mile Island, the Chernobyl disaster. This is a disasters of a different sort. There’s been three explosions. Are we in unchartered territory right now?

ARNIE GUNDERSEN: This is certainly right now bumping up against the magnitude of Chernobyl. It’s clearly passed what happened at Three Mile Island. And it’s not clear that this situation may not get worse, not better. You know, Chernobyl was one reactor. There are three in either partial meltdown or meltdown. And then the other one has a fuel pool fire. And I understand this morning that the temperatures in the other two fuel pools are also increasing. So, you know, I’ve said before that this could easily become Chernobyl on steroids. It’s not there yet, but given that the essential personnel have been evacuated, it could easily get there within 24 hours.

SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: And the issue of plutonium, Arnie Gundersen?

ARNIE GUNDERSEN: Yeah, you know, plutonium is named after Pluto, the god of Hell. And that’s an indication that it’s a pretty nasty element. It’s in all these reactors. Unit Three was using what’s called mixed oxide fuel. So Unit Three had more plutonium than the other units. But all of these reactor fuel pools and the nuclear reactors themselves have plutonium in them.

When plutonium volatilizes, when it gets hot and turns to a vapor, it can be breathed in. And, of course, it’s very—it can cause cancer in lungs very, very easily. And the containments, which are designed to contain this plutonium, are—have failed, at least in Unit Two. I believe in Unit One and Three, they are leaking, but they probably haven’t failed. So, it is likely that volatile plutonium is being released right now.

SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Finally, Arnie Gundersen, what is most important for people to understand as they follow the news in these coming days?

ARNIE GUNDERSEN: I guess if I were in Japan, I would at least get the children away from the reactor, because their bodies are growing faster and their cells are more susceptible to radiation damage. I would go out to 50 kilometers and at least get the children away from those reactors.

You know, Japan is a long way from the U.S. There’s 5,000 miles of ocean for that plume to disperse over. So, it’s a little bit too early to determine what the health effects are on the United States. But it’s clear to me we will detect it. Within about five to seven days, the plume will hit the West Coast, and we’ll begin to detect the radiation. Exactly what the magnitude of the radiation is, as your previous caller said, there’s not any good environmental monitoring. There’s no monitoring in the plant, because, one, there’s no people, and, two, the instruments have blown up. So, we just simply don’t know how much radiation is getting out. I think the numbers we’re seeing now are on the low side, and they don’t really represent the true magnitude of what’s already happening.

SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: I’d like to end with Aileen Mioko Smith. You’ve been in touch with many people in Japan. Talk about the recovery efforts right now—in the north, there’s bodies washing ashore, there’s millions without food or power—as this nuclear crisis is unfolding.

AILEEN MIOKO SMITH: Yes, that’s correct. All the people that we know in Fukushima and Miyagi, we haven’t heard from them. In, finally, the last day and a half, we received, like, a phone call, where it’s just an instant. You can hear a voice for a split second, and you know that the person is alive.

These are all people who were fighting and concerned about the seismic safety of the Fukushima plants. Actually, the last two years, there was a review of all the seismic situation at the nuclear power plants, whether the land was safe and the facility, the nuclear power plant, was strong enough to withstand quakes. And just the last few months, the last few weeks, citizens had pointed out that TEPCO’s analysis was insufficient, and the government should not approve TEPCO’s analysis, but the government approved it. And these are the citizens that are now—I don’t know, some of them, if
they’re alive or not.

The areas, the towns—we know people in all those towns. And you look at the photograph of the town, and it’s just completely devastated. I just completely believe that we would hear from all of them, and it was just a matter of time of hearing from them, but when you look at their towns, you know, you’re not sure, if you haven’t heard from them yet, whether they’re alive. So, they can’t—they can’t fight this situation now at the plant. All the people who were the spokespeople, who knew about the problems with the plant and the land there and the problems, they are all evacuated, or I don’t know if they’ve survived. And here we are—we’re the other spokespeople that lived further away, knew them, and are trying to speak on their behalf. And that’s where it is.

I was at the Fukushima plant last August with Kevin Kamps from Beyond Nuclear, based in Washington, D.C. We were there to warn about the dangers of spent nuclear fuel. I remember standing there with one of the people in Fukushima and looking down on the Daiichi plant on one side and the Daini plant on the other, and we took a photograph there, the three of us. And we met with the mayor of Futaba town, and also we were with—Kumano town, and also we went to Futaba town. These are two villages that are now completely evacuated.

We had independent scientists go in there three days ago, and they went in there to monitor. These are independent journalists that went with monitors to the actual towns that were evacuated. And all their radiation monitors went off. You could—they walked into the hospital of the town, and you could see that the evacuation was really rushed. They said that beds were turned over. Equipment, tubes for injections and everything was scattered all over the place. It was obvious people had left in a big hurry from the hospital. And when they went to the town hall, it was completely evacuated, and the levels just went off. So, they’re right now monitoring.

This person—as I was coming here to the studio, he was monitoring 50 kilometers, 30 kilometers from the plant and getting readings and putting it on the blog. I mean, this is the kind of information the government should be telling the people, but they don’t have the monitoring, because beyond 10 kilometers, radiation wasn’t supposed to leave. Every site in Japan, citizens have said, “Look, why do you say radiation stops immediately at 10 kilometers?” You know, it doesn’t, and you have to have a plan for if the radiation goes beyond 10. And the government, the national government, refuses to do this, and therefore, the prefectures didn’t get a plan. We’ve been to our prefecture over and over again about this.

SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Well, we’ll continue to—

AILEEN MIOKO SMITH: One of the problems that we have is that—yeah, we have plans for earthquake—

SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: We’re going to continue to follow this story over the coming days. Aileen Mioko Smith, we have to leave it there.

AILEEN MIOKO SMITH: OK.

SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: We’re going to continue to cover this story very closely in the coming days. Aileen Mioko Smith is the director of the Kyoto-based Green Action, on of Japan’s leading voices challenging the production, commerce and transport of nuclear material. And thank you very much to Arnie Gundersen, a nuclear engineer who’s coordinated projects at 70 nuclear power plants around the country.

 

[tioliaohuat]

Japan's disaster dead, missing toll tops 17,000
Posted: 18 March 2011 2210 hrs

TOKYO - The number of people confirmed dead in the March 11 earthquake and tsunami in Japan has hit 6,911, surpassing the toll from the massive tremor in Kobe in 1995, police said Friday.

The number of people unaccounted for rose slightly to 10,316, putting the combined total of dead and missing at 17,227, the National Police Agency said in its latest update. A total of 2,356 people were injured.

In January 1995, a 7.2-magnitude quake struck the western Japanese port city of Kobe, killing 6,434 people.

The March 11 quake is now Japan's deadliest natural disaster since the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake, which killed more than 142,000 people.

The toll from the disaster one week ago has increased steadily in recent days, and reports suggest it could eventually be much higher.

The mayor of the coastal town of Ishinomaki in Miyagi prefecture said late Wednesday that the number of missing there was likely to hit 10,000, Kyodo News reported.

On Saturday, public broadcaster NHK reported that around 10,000 people were unaccounted for in the port town of Minamisanriku in the same prefecture.

Amid a mass rescue effort there were grim updates indicating severe loss of life along the battered east coast of Honshu island, where the monster waves destroyed or damaged tens of thousands of homes and other buildings.

See photos before and after the earthquake and tsunami here

 

[shelltox]

the solution , use less electricity

 

[BlueCat]

it will take a long time for Japan to recover for this disaster.

 

[vamjok]

The bio fuel engine is still in the infantile stage of development. With time and resources, r&d will surely refine biofuel into a more efficient energy resource like all other energy technologies.

Diesel is just one example of singapore's lag behind the green iniative. Lpg and hybrid cars are also grossly underultilised here.

but the fact still remain, it will cause direct competition with food supply. this the main concern

 

[tioliaohuat]

Japan detects abnormal radiation levels in food
Posted: 19 March 2011 2020 hrs

OSAKA - Japan has detected abnormal levels of radiation in milk and spinach near a stricken nuclear plant, but the foods pose no immediate threat to humans, government spokesman Yukio Edano said Saturday.

Traces of radioactive iodine were meanwhile found in tap water in Tokyo and several prefectures near the atomic power complex, a science ministry official said, but the levels were well below the legal limit.

Traces of radioactive caesium were also found in tap water in Tochigi and Gunma.

But "the figures are well within the safety standards for drinking water," said the official, who did not want to be named.






The findings are nevertheless likely to fuel consumer fears in the wake of last week's quake and tsunami, which critically damaged the Fukushima No.1 plant northeast of Tokyo, sending radioactive substances leaking into the air.

"Radiation exceeding the limit under Japanese law was detected," Edano told reporters.

The contaminated milk was found in Fukushima prefecture, where the quake-damaged atomic power station is located, while the tainted spinach was discovered in neighbouring Ibaraki prefecture, Edano told reporters.

The milk was found more than 30 kilometres (20 miles) from the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant -- outside the government's exclusion zone.

The spokesman said the health ministry had ordered authorities in both prefectures to check where the products came from, how they were distributed and -- depending on their findings -- suspend sales.

"The government will do its utmost... to avoid health hazards and to resolve this problem," Edano said.

"The number does not present an immediate health threat. I would like to ask you to act calmly."

He noted that even if a consumer were to drink the contaminated milk for a year, the radiation level would be the equivalent of one hospital CT scan.

Plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) apologised for the contamination of foodstuffs and said it would look into compensating the farmers affected, Jiji Press reported.

Hideki Mukaitsubo, president of Fukushima Prefecture Minami Dairy located in Izumizaki village, 60 kilometres from the nuclear plant, said he was concerned about the long-term prospects for the industry.

"We've halted shipping completely. I really don't know what to do from tomorrow," Mukaitsubo told AFP by telephone, criticising the government's "unclear" sampling methods.

"I don't know any more about my future," said Mukaitsubo, who takes milk from several local producers.

Yukihiro Ebisawa, an official at Japan Agricultural Cooperatives in Ibaraki prefecture, said they had received an order to tell spinach producers not to harvest or ship any more produce.

"We are worried... I hope the situation will calm down as soon as possible," Ebisawa told AFP.

On Thursday, Japan instructed local authorities to start screening food for radioactivity following a series of accidents at the plant 250 kilometres (155 miles) northeast of Tokyo.

It is the first time Japan has set legal radiation limits on domestically produced foodstuffs.

The guidelines vary depending on the product and type of radioactive substances, and were set in consideration of internationally accepted levels and average intake in the Japanese diet.

Abnormal levels of radioactive iodine were found in the water supply in Tokyo as well as the central prefectures of Gunma, Tochigi, Saitama, Chiba and Niigata, according to the science ministry official.

The March 11 quake and tsunami knocked out the reactor cooling systems at the nuclear complex, which led to a string of explosions and fires.

Radioactive substances have since leaked into the air and workers are now battling to restore power to the plant and get the cooling systems running.

Several Asian nations have said they will screen food imported from Japan for radiation, while the European Union has called for similar checks.

Japanese web users were quick to react to the announcement on popular micro-blogging service Twitter -- and their words for the government and Prime Minister Naoto Kan were anything but kind.

"What the prime minister can do is to go out in the field and eat this spinach and milk, this news will likely spark harmful rumours," said one with the username sakuya-ntg.

"This spinach and milk problem, I can't make head nor tail of it because there is no information on the sampling... or whether these two are the only positive results after lots of tests," said another, tweetingMiki. "I am waiting for details."

 

[tioliaohuat]

IAEA warns of risks in radioactive tainted food
Posted: 19 March 2011 2234 hrs

VIENNA - UN nuclear watchdog IAEA warned Saturday of the risks to humans of ingesting contaminated food products, after Japan said it had detected abnormal levels of radioactivity in milk and spinach.

Japan's health ministry had confirmed that the substance found in higher-than-usual doses in foods near the quake-damaged Fukushima No.1 plant northeast of Tokyo was radioactive iodine, the International Atomic Energy Agency said in a statement.

"Though radioactive iodine has a short half-life of about eight days and decays naturally within a matter of weeks, there is a short-term risk to human health if radioactive iodine in food is absorbed into the human body," the Vienna-based body warned.

"If ingested, it can accumulate in and cause damage to the thyroid."

"Children and young people are particularly at risk of thyroid damage due to the ingestion of radioactive iodine," it added.

Taking stable iodine -- as opposed to radioactive iodine -- tablets could however help prevent the harmful substance from accumulating in the thyroid, the watchdog said, noting that Japanese authorities had recommended evacuees from the plant's vicinity to take these precautions and that tablets and syrups had been distributed in evacuation centres around Japan.

No other radioactive isotopes had been found in food products in unusual doses, it added.

Japan announced earlier Saturday that it had detected abnormal levels of radiation in milk and spinach near the nuclear plant, which was critically damaged after last week's earthquake and tsunami, sending radioactive substances into the air.

Traces of radioactive substances were also detected in Japan's tap water.

However, the government reassured that both the food and the water did not present "an immediate health threat."

The food contamination was measured between March 16 and 18, said the IAEA, which has been monitoring developments at the nuclear plant for the past week.

IAEA director general Yukiya Amano also flew to Japan on Thursday to talk to nuclear and government officials there.

 

[tioliaohuat]

Japan races to start nuclear plant cooling system
Posted: 19 March 2011 1800 hrs

OSAKA, Japan - Engineers at a stricken nuclear power plant in Japan were close to restoring power to vital cooling systems Saturday as they scrambled to prevent a full-blown meltdown, officials said.

Electricity was expected to be reconnected to four reactor units at the Fukushima No. 1 plant on Saturday and to the other two Sunday, more than a week after a devastating earthquake and tsunami, the nuclear safety agency said.

The announcement offered some hope of a breakthrough in efforts to prevent a major radiation leak from the troubled facility, although it is not yet clear whether the cooling system will work properly even if power is restored.

The government meanwhile said it had discovered abnormal levels of radiation that exceeded the legal limit in milk and spinach from areas near the stricken plant, but that they posed no immediate threat to humans.

Emergency services resumed spraying water at the number three reactor using specially equipped fire trucks and said they were stepping up the dousing, aiming for round-the-clock operations.







Defence Minister Toshimi Kitazawa said surface temperatures at the plant "seem to be stable" at no more than 100 degrees Celsius (212 degrees F).

Tonnes of water have been used to douse overheating fuel rods in what the head of the UN International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has described as "a race against time" to prevent a major disaster.

Plant operator TEPCO has not ruled out the last-resort option of entombing the plant in sand and concrete as Russia did with the Chernobyl plant in 1986, but says it is still focusing its efforts on cooling the facility.

The company said it had installed an external power line to the plant, located about 250 kilometres (155 miles) northeast of Tokyo, and was battling to reconnect reactor units, starting with the least damaged unit.

"We are still working to lay the power line for a distance of 1.5 kilometres (one mile) to reconnect the reactor number two. We are struggling in this work," a TEPCO spokesman said.

Industrial giant Hitachi reportedly sent 80 workers to help lay electricity lines and other equipment to restore power.

Four of the plant's six reactor units -- numbers one to four -- have been in danger of spewing dangerous amounts of radioactivity, following a series of hydrogen explosions and fires at buildings housing the troubled reactors.



The 9.0-magnitude earthquake last week, followed by monster tsunami waves and aftershocks, knocked out the power supply, including generators for emergency use, at the plant on the Pacific coast.

See photos before and after the earthquake and tsunami here

Authorities have since struggled to keep the fuel rods inside reactors, and fuel storage containment pools, under water.

If they are exposed to air, they could degrade further and emit large amounts of radioactive material.

TEPCO said Saturday that its engineers had bored holes in the roofs of the buildings housing reactors five and six to avoid a potential explosion of hydrogen gas.

Japan's nuclear safety agency on Friday raised the Fukushima crisis level to five from four on the international scale of gravity for atomic accidents, which goes up to seven.

The decision puts Fukushima on the same level as the 1979 accident at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania and makes it the worst ever in Japan.

"This is a very grave and serious accident," the Japanese head of the IAEA, Yukiya Amano, said Friday after meeting Prime Minister Naoto Kan in Tokyo.

Japan has said radiation levels from the plant pose no health threat outside a 20-kilometre exclusion zone, despite slightly elevated levels in Tokyo earlier in the week.

Government spokesman Yukio Edano told reporters Saturday that milk contaminated with radiation was found in Fukushima prefecture, while tainted spinach was discovered in neighbouring Ibaraki prefecture.

"Radiation exceeding the limit under Japanese law was detected," Edano said.

He said the health ministry has ordered authorities to investigate where the products came from and, depending on their findings, suspend sales.

But Edano urged consumers to remain calm, noting that even if a person were to drink the contaminated milk for a year, the radiation level would be the equivalent of one CT scan.

The IAEA, which has sent a radiation monitoring team to Japan, said Friday that levels detected in the capital did not pose any harm to human health.



But despite the reassurances, Britain, France and other countries have advised their citizens to leave Tokyo and many foreigners have fled the capital, fearing that a larger radiation leak might reach the sprawling city.

 

[tioliaohuat]

Radioactive substances detected in seawater near Japan nuke plant
Posted: 22 March 2011 0335 hrs


OSAKA: High levels of radioactive substances have been detected in seawater near a quake-crippled nuclear power plant in Japan, its operator said early Tuesday.

The substances were detected in seawater which was sampled on Monday about 100 metres south of the Fukushima No.1 plant, a Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) official said, stressing it was not a threat to human health.

"Normally, such radioactive substances are not detected in the area," said Naoki Tsunoda, adding that the company will continue monitoring at the same point and in other areas.

TEPCO said the level of iodine-131 was 126.7 times higher and caesium-134 was 24.8 times higher than government-set standards.

The level of caesium-137 was also 16.5 times higher while that of cobalt-58 was lower than the standard, said Tsunoda.

A 9.0-magnitude quake and ensuing tsunami on March 11 devastated Japan's northeastern Pacific coast, knocking out the plant's cooling systems and leaving it on the brink of a catastrophic meltdown.

Helicopters and fire trucks have been deployed to pour water over heating fuel rods at the plant since Thursday.

- AFP/de

 

[Spock]

Those some turbine and solar on top of the building only generated maybe less than 200Kw or less in total average each building . Does not cost a lot for electrical component. Can use grid tie inverter which is available in market and not very expensive. Almost all power will be consume within the building it self if not enough then use SP grid(that called hybrid). Extra maybe only at night time when high wind can sale it back to SP (of course at discount price now is easily done just need to apply they will come and change the meter).
Is not economical to store electric on battery that why better sell back to SP(no need to maintain battery, buy battery and battery storage).

I don't think it is economical to sell energy to SP if you can only generate around 200kW per building. Yes, you can use that energy to offset your energy bill but who will pay to build the infrastructure? Certainly not the government as they will stand to lose huge on revenue. Don't forget that the SG govt has a vested interest in the energy market.

 

[Kohliantye]

Kohliantye , are you a journalist ?

No KNNBCCB, I am not a journalist. I am just a concerned citizen like you and all the rest. I have seen many tragic and unforgettable experience in my life. I value the lives of our children and grandchildren and hence hope that we will one day become a nation where there will be peace and harmony and everyone will become equal. That day is not that far off. Judgement Day for Singapore is drawing closer. All the best.