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Fukushima Falling Apart … Because Plant Operator Has No Incentive to Spend Money to Fix It
After visiting Fukushima a year ago, Senator Ron Wyden warned that the situation was worse than reported … and urged Japan to accept international help to stabilize dangerous spent fuel pools.
A year ago, an international coalition of nuclear scientists and non-profit groups called on the U.N. to coordinate a multi-national effort to stabilize the fuel pools. And see this.
A year ago, former U.N. adviser Akio Matsumura – whose praises have been sung by Mikhail Gorbachev, U.S. Ambassadors Stephen Bosworth and Glenn Olds, and former U.S. Deputy Secretary of State and Goldman Sachs co-chair John C. Whitehead – noted:
The current Japanese government has not yet mentioned the looming disaster, ostensibly to not incite panic in the public. Nevertheless, action must be taken quickly. *** We believe an independent, international team of structural engineers and other advisers must be assembled and deployed immediately.
Yesterday – after Fukushima reactor operator Tepco’s recklessness and nickel-and-diming cheapness in dealing with the post-accident response caused new releases of radioactivity – the New York Times reported:
Increasingly, experts are arguing that the plant’s operator, the Tokyo Electric Power Company, or Tepco, cannot be trusted to lead what is expected to be decades of cleanup and the decommissioning of the plant’s reactors without putting the public, and the environment, at risk.
***
“The Fukushima Daiichi plant remains in an unstable condition, and there is concern that we cannot prevent another accident,” Shunichi Tanaka, chairman of the Nuclear Regulation Authority, said at a news conference.
***
“No wonder the water is leaking,” said Hideo Komine, a professor in civil engineering at Ibaraki University, just south of Fukushima. He said that the outer protective lining should have been hundreds of times thicker.
***
Muneo Morokuzu, a nuclear safety expert at the Tokyo University Graduate School of Public Policy, said that the plant required a more permanent solution that would reduce the flood of contaminated water into the plant in the first place, and that Tepco was simply unable to manage the situation. “It’s become obvious that Tepco is not at all capable of leading the cleanup,” he said. “It just doesn’t have the expertise, and because Fukushima Daiichi is never going to generate electricity again, every yen it spends on the decommissioning is thrown away.”
“That creates an incentive to cut corners, which is very dangerous,” he said. “The government needs to step in, take charge and assemble experts and technology from around the world to handle the decommissioning instead.”
This is just like BP’s massive efforts to hide the extent and damage from the oil spill – even though their approach led to greater oil pollution – in order to avoid costs. (And the big banks’ cover up of the extent and damage from criminal fraud on the U.S. economy.)
AP provides additional details:
A makeshift system of pipes, tanks and power cables meant to carry cooling water into the melted reactors and spent fuel pools inside shattered buildings remains highly vulnerable, Nuclear Regulation Authority chairman Shunichi Tanaka acknowledged Wednesday.
***
The problems have raised doubts about whether the plant can stay intact through a decommissioning process that could take 40 years, prompting officials to compile risk-reduction measures and revise decommissioning plans.
***
Just over the past three weeks, there have been at least eight accidents or problems at the plant, the nuclear watchdog said.
***
Experts suspect the radioactive water has been leaking since early in the crisis, citing high contamination in fish caught in waters just off the plant.
***
“The nuclear crisis is far from over,” the nationwide Mainichi newspaper said in a recent editorial. “There is a limit to what the patchwork operation can do on a jury-rigged system.”
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/chuckle
As is often mentioned by Tyler et al,
Japan is one of the top 3 buyers of U.S. debt instruments. They switch back and forth with China for the #2 slot. Obviously, the USGOV is in the #1 position.
With this knowledge, does anyone really think the US would do anything that would potentially upset the buyer? Hardly.
This would include providing funding for research into the impact of Fukushima on the Pacific food chain, imported fish inspections, radioisotope deposition from rainout/fallout, etc..
And you can be sure that no one in academia who gets federal funding from the likes of NSF or DOE will publish any damaging papers, lest they have future proposals placed in the circular file without consideration, let alone be edged out of tenure.
The scientific world knows Japan is screwed, as is the Pacific.
They are in what can easily been seen as a semi-controlled descent.
All good points which should be assumed to be true given the current geo-economic circumstances. China would not overtly upset the apple cart but I wonder if they are holding North Korea on a leash as their attack dog, while saying every now and then "stand back we can't really control this thing if it gets loose". All the while the dog has long since been trained and told what to do..... and when. There is a covert push and pull going on here that is unseen but well read by politicos everywhere.
There is an awful lot of resources at stake under those islands, which both Japan and China need badly. If you were China would you maybe make a deal with North Korea promising future access to those resources in return for a set of unspecified actions taken to unsettle the hornets nest without China getting blamed directly? None of this happens by mistake. This is just beginning.
As for nuclear fallout / contamination- Japan is done, or at least maybe 1/2 to 2/3rds of it land wise, with the smart ones leaving altogether as groundwater contamination is verified in various areas (though of course not verified by Japanese Gov. sources). Pacific is contaminated. Other oceans to follow (Fukushima elements already detected in the Atlantic). Then only a matter of time until it runs up the entire food chain (look up Bioaccumulation if you are new to this). Most are unaware of the levels of contamination and definately unaware that it is ongoing with no real end in sight. All because few in power acknowledged the real risks with nuclear power and or had any real plan for it's extremely dangerous waste.
Sad, what we have done to our world. Our kids world.
"Upset the buyer?" Of course Japan or China could do some real economic damage to the US, but that would be akin to killing the patient to get rid of the disease.
True, but it goes beyond that: The AMERICAN Government Is Dictating Japanese Nuclear Policy
Powerful.
May be of interest, especially in that regard:
http://www.osti.gov/bridge/purl.cover.jsp;jsessionid=155625E943B180513B3...
It's the containment and release management handbook for the fukushima reactor.
And Natural Gas continues to rally! Wonder why!
They need to relocate the families of Tepco decision makers and of the Japanese government leaders to homes around the Fukushima plant. It might help them to keep their minds a little better focused on the ongoing risks there.
Everywhere you look the msm is pwned, bad news is simply buried, really bad news is incinerated, the most tragic news possible never happened. Thank fukc for ZH.
NIMBY anyone?
Just another excuse for a stockmarket rally!
tepco is the 'government'...bp is the 'government'. how would the response be different if 'the government' was in charge. stories like this are bullshit. two stories back washington states the gov is the problem...now it is the solution...?! WTF.
I've said for years it's collusion between corrupt government officials and currupt big business men. For example: Japanese Parliamentary Inquiry: Fukushima Disaster Caused by “Collusion” Among Government, Regulators and Tepco
You left out the Yakuza.
My impression is that GW is stating what TEPCO should have been doing, and what the government should do.
GW did not state the government will do what is needed.
Rather, I expect GW would AGREE with you as to the institutional reason less than enough is being done.
In this event, we can expect the losses, the costs to be socialized. Presumably, because of that, some "clean-up", however inadequate will be attempted.
Those who believe, in this case, government should just get out of the way and let private business handle it to the satisfaction (i.e. profit-making without government intervention) of private business - those individuals are pursuing a pipe dream.
Child's play, m'boy.
Gameplan is to force other nations, especially in more vulnerable Northern Hemisphere, to demand [yes, even beg] to be allowed to send money and contractors to mitigate unstoppable radioactive releases into air and ocean from Japan. At the proper moment, the commoners of the "other nations" will gladly volunteer and pay for the privilege of shared sacrifice.. IMO, that's 2 or 3 years away, at most.
Eugenics has the answer.
Just march all the hated people into the hole until it's stopped up.
i say we nuke it
justify our arsenal
whats the worst that could happen?
Ya know, I said the same thing here about a year ago and some guy came on and ripped me a new one. I sometimes wonder though, is it not possible that the fuels could be transmuted to a stable nuclei via a different "path" if they were "nuked"? Or is that just silly, the U235 is going to decay, slowly, through all the ugly stuff, regardless.
Look, I did it again. I bet that guy is already writing a response to re-open the wound he tore last year.
The most realistic plan I've heard of involved the detonation of a large nuke (or possibly non-nuke if workable) somewhere under fukushima, deep enough to not create a radiactive nightmare above ground (with contaminants going airborne in mass that is). The idea would be to create a crater big enough to embody the whole complex which would then fill with water (being on the sea). This accomplishes two things- it immediately acts as a shield to the radioactivity and it also allows the area to be slowly filled in with a cement slurry (which can cure under water). The concerns are more ocean contamination (perhaps a lot more short term) and the unpredictable effect that it would have on the bedrock below the sight- ie. would it create other leakage issues deep within the area. One problem with this is that they would need to get at the spent rod pools first, to somehow prevent them from getting condensed in an implosion. That said, there are no easy answers to the problem they have.
The easiest solution is to plan for these events before they happen, while your planning/building the facility! Of course, that's added expense and doesn't fit the idea of making the most god damn money possible with the least amount invested regardless of the level of risk. It's crazy when I watch these melt down videos because I keep hearing about "containment" issues in regards to the material melting through the ground and keep thinking that no one would play "cheapo" in regards to mucking around with this type of material so there must be at least 3 levels of redundant containment vessels under these things for the "just in case" scenario but you're always shocked to look at the schematic designs and you say to yourself, "That's it? That was the extent of their contingency plan"? You would think that almost every "What if?" would be asked and planned for before the structure even begun to be built. Hell, I'm sure a fraction of the 18 Billion dollars they spent in just containing Chernobyl could have gone a long way to preventing it in the first place or at least mitigating the effects. The damn robots should have already been built with radiation shielding for immediate deployment into action once notified of any disaster but no, we'll wait and hack something together if it's ever necessary. The willfull incompetence and dismissal of worst case scenarios by people who mess with technology that effects countries and the entire planet is beyond criminal and they should all be forced to succumb to the disaster which they create like a boat captain going down with his ship. That way, they'll be a lot less of "oops...what do we do now?" or "I knew we should have fixed that valve/pump/leak/red blinking light/etc" or "should have put our coolant pump for the core above sea level". The gambles these psychopaths take with everyone's health, safety and lives for nominal financial benefits in the scheme of things is beyond astonishing and fills me with contempt for mankind.
-In my mind, some people are thinking of doing the nuke option.
"expected to be decades of cleanup and the decommissioning of the plant’s reactors"
-good luck with that-
-If the site becomes to contaminated for people to work, Fukushima becomes a dooms day machine, many people think, soon come, self included.
-Zero Hedge for Fukushima.
-Nuf' Said
Jah bless us all, Rosta
Similar to the Evil NWO or Jew World Order plan for 9-11 explosive demolition of the World Trade Center Towers with the avoidance of paying for asbestos clean-up. Just explosively scatter the asbestos into the air and let everyone inhale the asbestos and get lung cancer.
.....and just when California oceanside property values were beginning to lift....
The new Cali surfers will have three feet....better to balance on their boards....
My understanding is that Kuroda and the BOJ will use all those extra yen they're printing to soak up these 'minor' spills.
<Go back to sleep world, nothing to see here.>
Waves hand. "Those aren't the isotopes you're looking for"
Nobody cares about Fukushima except N.Korea. We have gay marriage to contemplate. And just what does that mean? Its an incentive to join a fight club.
Nor do they care that US reactors are well beyond the age of their original design lives (30 years) or that spent fuel is stored at virtually all of them in 'swimming pools.' Carry on everyone. Nothing to see here.
From my unfortunate experience in the nuclear power industry, I blame a combination of engineering incompetence and management stupidity and Goverment NRC ignorance of the reality and extent of the problems.
Management was only interested in the lowest cost, and concealing problems, so that the NRC remained ignorant of the problems.
Internal memos describing problems were often ignored, and emails to the outside news media idiot journalists without any technical knowledge were useless.
These days nobody cares about anything until it personally affects them -and- they can detect it is affecting them. Every person for themselves in the New Normal.
it's the age of "self". a well-done documentary by bbc. highly recommended. i don't remember the exact name but shouldn't be a problem for an experienced googler.
Hope & Change. Anyone remember Hillary after the accident saying everything was under control? Hip & Hop Amerikan govt.
You just made me agitated again right as I was calming down before my bedtime Thorazine enema.
The "me" generation coming full circle. Glad I'm old.
That pretty much sums it up. Long live denialism until you choke on your own radioactive nosebleed.
Live by the lie then die from the truth.
Me first, where's mine, up yours.
Every day, on display, everywhere.
overpopulation makes life cheap and resources dear.
In my half century or so of observation in this country of ours, I would say I wholeheartedly agree with your summation of the problem.
so true, but help is on the way:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Coming-Population-Crash-Surprising/dp/08070012...
Thanks, George. You and Greg Palast seem to be the only ones reporting on Fukushima. Is anyone else? If so, I must have missed it.
Yes, love Greg Palast. Also I still think that eventually we won't be able to eat any food from the ocean because of radiation and we will have to scan our food on shore also because of the possibility of contamination.
How can I be the man when PALAST is the man? (That's an American joke).
Don't worry GW. GP is 'tainted', and while delivering some truth, it is managed truth none the less.
You remain The Man.
Someone else reporting on Fukushima.
http://fukushima-diary.com/
Upvoted.
http://enenews.com/
Upvoted