The Disaster at Fukushima Gets Even Worse - FDL

[WillyT]

The Disaster at Fukushima Gets Even Worse
By: solartopia - FDL
Friday August 9, 2013 4:39 pm

UPDATE: Radioactive water overruns Fukushima barrier: http://rt.com/news/fukushima-water-overrun-barrier-335/

Contaminated groundwater accumulating under the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant has risen 60cm above the protective barrier, and is now freely leaking into the Pacific Ocean, the plant’s operator TEPCO has admitted.

<snip>

The Horror at Fukushima Flows Ever Deeper
By Harvey Wasserman

Just when it seemed things might be under control at Fukushima, we find they are worse than ever. Immeasurably worse.

Massive quantities of radioactive liquids are now flowing through the shattered reactor site into the Pacific Ocean. And their make-up is far more lethal than the “mere” tritium that has dominated the headlines to date.

Tepco, the owner/operator—and one of the world’s biggest and most technologically advanced electric utilities—has all but admitted it cannot control the situation. Their shoddy performance has prompted former US Nuclear Regulatory Commissioner Dale Klein to charge: ”You don’t <know> what you are doing.”

The Japanese government is stepping in. But there is no guarantee—or even likelihood—it will do any better.

In fact, there is no certainty as to what’s causing this out-of-control flow of death and destruction. Some 16 months after three of the six reactors exploded at the Fukushima Daichi site, nobody can offer a definitive explanation of what is happening there or how to deal with it.

The most cogent speculation now centers on the reality that, simply enough, water flows downhill...

<snip>

More: http://my.firedoglake.com/solartopia/2013/08/09/the-disaster-at-fukushima-gets-even-worse/

[no_hypocrisy]

1. Why doesn't Japan declare this an international emergency and

ask for the preeminent scientists and engineers to lend their help?

[snappyturtle]

5. I haven't heard any of our "leaders" say a word about this.

Have you?

[malaise]

7. We've been saying that all week

The silence is deafening

[snappyturtle]

10. I've been 'watching' this on another website DU doesn't like so

I can't post from there but the consensus is that the present day
situation is awful, to say the least. I just keep thinking I'll wake
up one morning and see headlines here in the U.S. When I think
of the consequences, I shudder.

[malaise]

32. Funny how they attempt to frighten us about nonsense while this is going on

This is scary. Thanks for the video

[snappyturtle]

12. Here's a video from RT:

[WinkyDink]

11. Like, why not when it first happened?!

[Mnemosyne]

2. I wonder why all those sea lions were beaching themselves awhile back? As much as I knew how bad

this was from the beginning, it still rips my heart to keep seeing more and more of this catastrophe revealed.

I weep for my grand children's future, for several generations of the world's grand-children.

[MotherPetrie]

3. Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck

[Mnemosyne]

4. Word, Mother Petrie, word. nt

[truebrit71]

14. Yup...

My thought exactly...

[BobbyBoring]

6. Pulling the covers back over my head

Maybe this is a bad dream?

[Junkdrawer]

8. Arnie Gundersen: There is no way to stop Fukushima radioactive water leaking into the Pacific

Evgeny Sukhoi: Is it possible to somehow make the wastewater storage basins waterproof and thus rule out leakage?

Arnie Gundersen: The horse is already out of the barn here. This plant’s been leaking for two years. And finally, now, the radioactive water has made it to the ocean. But my experience with underground water is that – if it is serious at the ocean, it is more serious as you move away from the ocean. So, spike of radiation continues to move to the ocean.

The Japanese are proposing putting in a barrier to prevent the water from entering the ocean. That is two years too late and will be too late by the time they construct that barrier. But the barrier also causes another problem. If the water can’t go anywhere into the Pacific Ocean, it is going to build up onsite, which means that the nuclear reactors themselves will become unstable. The water can pull underneath the nuclear buildings and if there is an earthquake, in fact the nuclear buildings could topple. So, by solving one problem, they are creating another problem.

ES: Is it possible to somehow avoid that scenario?

AG: The solution that I proposed two years ago was to surround the plant with a trench filled with material called zeolite. That’s just the volcanic ash. The volcanic ash is very good at absorbing radiation. But the solution isn’t to keep the water from getting out. The solution is to keep the water from getting in. So, outside the trench that they surround the plant, if they pull the water level down (the clean water outside the trench) that would prevent further water from leaking into the Daiichi site.

The Japanese haven’t been willing to spend the money. I approached them two years ago with this and I was told that Tokyo Electric doesn’t have the money to spend. But of course, the problem now is that we are contaminating the Pacific Ocean which is extraordinarily serious.

....

http://fairewinds.org/media/in-the-news/there-is-no-way-to-stop-fukushima-radioactive-water-leaking-into-the-pacific

[CrispyQ]

35. This:

"...the problem now is that we are contaminating the Pacific Ocean which is extraordinarily serious."

[marions ghost]

37. How would this be different

--if experts on the level of Arnie Gunderson had been pulled in right at the beginning?

[Mnemosyne]

42. People here were dissing Gunderson hard, calling him whack job, etc, etc, etc. Though it was likely

almost too late from the beginning anyway, Gunderson, et al, would have been the smartest choice, to ask to evaluate and advise.

Mad world.

[marions ghost]

44. Yes I remember that

a lot of pro nuke people came out of the woodwork to do a hatchet job on Gunderson.

He's been right all along IMO. Inconvenient truths have a hard time in this world.

[Mnemosyne]

45. Inconvenient truths, the enemy of willful ignorance. nt

[heaven05]

9. This

mess has NEVER been under control. Been fubar since day one and all we've gotten is silence and then more lies and more lies and more lies. Contingency plans, what the fuck ever happened to those? This problem unless fixed soon WILL end up affecting a lot of plant, animal, marine and human life, forever.

[jtuck004]

13. That headline is misleading, I think. It should say"Has Never Gotten Better".

Everything I read indicates that these buildings have been open to the ground for at least a couple of years. That containment wall is nothing more than a circle around it. The top is open to the air and the bottom to the ground water that goes up and down underground with the tide, alternately soaking up and and then flushing the poisons coming out of the broken reactors.

They have been injecting chemicals in trying to stabilize the ground underneath, kind of like pumping in concrete, with no indication that it has ever worked, similarly with pumping in cooling water in that appears to have been in contact with the enriched materials (which it should never touch). Between the hydrogen explosions and the burning heat from the cores, it sure seems at least one of these has been operating like an open-air BBQ pit since shortly after the Tsunami.

[WinkyDink]

15. And, of course, there is really only one ocean by different names.

[Drew Richards]

16. Cue the nuc apologists in 3 tell us again how safe this crap is.

[Mnemosyne]

43. Yep, no worse than exposure to bananas or a flight. Heard it here. nt

[Art_from_Ark]

47. It depends on where you are

The worst effects by far are in Fukushima, especially in the immediate coastal waters and areas downwind from the reactors. Ambient and ground radiation levels there are still so high that the 12-mile exclusion zone is still considered unfit for habitation. However, in this part of Japan, roughly 100 miles south of the reactors, the ambient radiation levels are near normal (<0.09 microsieverts/hour), and have been showing a slightly declining trend for approximately 2 years.

http://www.aist.go.jp/taisaku/ja/measurement/

[mick063]

17. Tank AY-102

This needs funding!

All I am going to say.

Refer to Dept. of Energy for more information.

[Generic Other]

21. I am with you on that one

Hanford is also critical!

[Recursion]

18. What kind of contamination is it?

If it's contaminated with alpha emitters, the ocean is the safest place for it to be. If it's itself heavy water, that's a huge problem.

[WillyT]

20. Well...

Reports now indicate the outflow at Fukushima also includes substantial quantities of radioactive iodine, cesium and strontium. That, in turn, indicates there is probably more we haven’t yet heard about.

This is very bad news.

Iodine-131, for example, can be ingested into the thyroid, where it emits beta particles (electrons) that damage tissue. A plague of damaged thyroids has already been reported among as many as 40% of the children in the Fukushima area. That percentage can only go higher. In developing youngsters, it can stunt both physical and mental growth. Among adults it causes a very wide range of ancillary ailments, including cancer.

Cesium-137 from Fukushima has been found in fish caught as far away as California. It spreads throughout the body, but tends to accumulate in the muscles. Strontium-90′s half-life is around 29 years. It mimics calcium and goes to our bones.

That these are among the isotopes being dumped into the Pacific is the worst news to come from Japan since Hiroshima and Nagasaki, whose bombings occurred 68 years ago this week, and whose fallout has been vastly exceeded at Fukushima.

Indeed, Japanese experts have already estimated Fukushima’s fallout at 20-30 times as high as the 1945 bombings. This latest revelation will send that number soaring.

The dominant reality is this: there is absolutely no indication how or when this lethal outflow will stop. Thus far Tepco has built scores of tanks on the site to contain whatever contaminated water they can capture. But they by no means are getting all of it, and they are running out of space. Some of the tanks, of course, have already sprung leaks.

Same article.

[Recursion]

22. I-131 emits betas and has a half life of 8 days

That doesn't really bother me too much.

CS-137 emits betas (not much of a problem in the ocean) but has a half-life of 30 years or so (big problem) and decays into gamma emitters (which is less attenuated by water). So, that sucks.

[Junkdrawer]

36. CS-137 not much of a problem in the ocean?????

Bioaccumulation of 137Cs in pelagic food webs in the Norwegian and Barents Seas

Abstract
Knowledge and documentation of the levels of radioactive contamination in fish stocks important to Norwegian fisheries is of major importance to Norwegian consumers and fish export industry. In the present study, the bioaccumulation of caesium-137 ((137)Cs) has been investigated in marine food webs in the Barents and Norwegian Seas. The contents of (137)Cs in the different organisms were generally low (<1 Bq kg(-1) wet weight), but a marked bioaccumulation was apparent: The concentration of (137)Cs was about 10-fold higher in the harbour porpoise Phocoena phocoena, representing the upper level of the food web, than in the amphipod Themisto sp., representing the lower level of the food web. The Concentration Factors (CF=Bq kg(-1) wet weight/Bq l(-1) seawater) increased from 10+/-3 for a mixed sample of krill and amphipods to 165+/-5 for harbour porpoises.

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=CS-137%20bioaccumulation&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&ved=0CCoQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fpubmed%2F12527234&ei=j7MHUouoBaKbygHFs4GIAw&usg=AFQjCNGTx36SqyIW_ZLACKH1WzZvlfVZFw

[Recursion]

38. Alpha emissions aren't much of a problem

Cs itself is, as I went on to say

[Junkdrawer]

40. The contaminants are being released into the environment where it bioaccumulates...

and makes its way into food. Your "analysis" treats the contaminants merely as external emitters.

[Recursion]

41. No, that's the distinction I was making

That's why the Cesium worries me a lot more than the Iodine. As far as the emissions themselves, the ocean is the "best" place for them to be; the problem is the Cesium sticks around a long time and makes its way up the food chain.

[Nay]

19. If the US wants to be the policeman of the world, why the hell can't we step in and

force the Japanese to accept help, deal with this rationally, and STOP this disaster??? Why the hell do we care if we upset someone? Hell, we're spending billions upsetting the ME with nothing to show for it; why can't we step up and do something that will really SAVE THE WORLD???

[mick063]

23. This is going to take the latest technology, a great deal of time, and tens of billions of dollars.

And it will never be "clean". Just mitigated to "acceptable" levels.

Trust me on this.




PU 239, which is one of three PU isotopes discovered in the soil near Fukushima has a half life of 24,000 years.

How old are the pyramids? 10,000 years max?

Ponder that only a handful of language specialists can interpret the "warnings" within the pyramids.

There is no clean up. Just a shell game. Take it from an undesired area and store it in a more desirable area. Hopefully in containment that will last a long, long time.

[Nay]

25. Well, I know -- that's why I'm asking why no one has started!! nt

[riderinthestorm]

24. So awful. And scary. And a big K&R because I feel so helpless when I read this stuff nt

[Flaxbee]

26. Our "leaders" don't want to destroy the economy.

Japan is seriously f*cked for a very long time, especially if the fresh water is contaminated (and if you think that's secure, in light of everything else we haven't been told... well, I think you're whistling in the dark). If Japan's fresh water is radioactive, much of Japan is going to be uninhabitable. Japan is a huge economy. And nuclear power has our politicians by the short and curly.

A market economy doesn't work in situations of life and death. We see that all too clearly in the realm of health care. And nuclear power is also life and death. We shouldn't play with nuclear power, we shouldn't take the risk.

But greed seems to overwhelm all.

[Safetykitten]

27. Kids! It's a humoungous ocean. That's what I was told by the no-problem we got it crowd.

They know their stuff! Why it was just last...well, it happened before when a reactor spilled it's guts in the ocean...well maybe not happened before, but THEY KNOW! They know it's no biggie. The ocean is so vast it would take a trillion Fukushimas. No, a trillion trillion!

They told me not to worry, and you should not also.

[mick063]

28. I believe I had an argument with someone on this (possibly you?)

It was based upon this incident relative to some other contaminated places in the world.

There are worse places in the world, primarily due to Fukushima's proximity to the ocean. It does not mean that Fukushima is nothing to worry about. It just means the possibility for environmental dynamics to dilute the contamination are greater. Fukushima is still a very serious incident.

[Safetykitten]

29. Let me look on my Excel sheet for "Arguments"...I will get back you.

[Chaco Dundee]

30. that writing was on the wall

As early as 1972 we protested in germany to shut those deathtraps down.we were ignored and laught at by the world.chernobyl and fukushima are shining examples of what can happen.the consequenses of those disasters lay with everyone who did not care,or stand up.

[chervilant]

34. Since 1978,

I've been protesting nukes. Like thousands of other concerned denizens on this planet, I've been variously placated, derided, and ignored. I have been condescended to countless times on this "Democratic" website (oh, and it's really ironic to have fellow DUers tell you "coal and fracking are much more deadly," as though your anti-nuke activism precludes any other environmental sensibilities).

[Chaco Dundee]

46. well said

Coal and fracking are a problem but could be deald with if managed right instead of the cheapest way possible.nukes though are the ones wich will be unmanageble just like chernobil and fukushima.

[Liberal_in_LA]

31. kick

[snappyturtle]

33. Kick! nt

[Octafish]

39. Ask your doctor if plutonium is right for you.

DOE-STD-1128-98

Guide of Good Practices for Occupational Radiological Protection in Plutonium Facilities

EXCERPT...

4.2.3 Characteristics of Plutonium Contamination

There are few characteristics of plutonium contamination that are unique. Plutonium
contamination may be in many physical and chemical forms. (See Section 2.0 for the many
potential sources of plutonium contamination from combustion products of a plutonium fire
to radiolytic products from long-term storage.) [font color="blue"]The one characteristic that many believe is
unique to plutonium is its ability to migrate with no apparent motive force. Whether from
alpha recoil or some other mechanism, plutonium contamination, if not contained or
removed, will spread relatively rapidly throughout an area. [/font color]

SOURCE (PDF file format): http://www.hss.doe.gov/nuclearsafety/techstds/docs/standard/DOE-STD-1128-2008.pdf