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Tepco Begins Removing Cover From Destroyed Fukushima Reactor Just As Local Farmers Plant Rice
May is usually the time when farmers in Japan's Fukushima prefecture - best known for being the tragic venue of the 2011 Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant disaster - plant rice. This year, however, they will be planting something else: an unknown, and quite lethal, amount of radioactive dust.
According to EFE, earlier today TEPCO began work to remove the cover placed over the building housing reactor No. 1, a key step towards dismantling the plant. The work is part of a preparatory process that could take several years for the eventual removal of nuclear fuel from the spent fuel pool in the No. 1 reactor building. The cover, incidentally, was made of polyester.
The "cover" did not contain the radiation which clearly can cross a polyester membrane without difficulty: it merely prevented the radioactive dust from spreading all over the surrounding country. It was placed over the radioactive tomb some time before Tepco conceived of and then gave up on the idiotic and impractical idea of encasing the radioactive disaster zone in a wall of ice.
The proposed process was detailed at the time by the Mail:
A computer image shows how engineers will construct a cover around the damaged No.1 reactor
As Asahi Shimbun summarizes, on the first day of the work, TEPCO sprayed a chemical agent in the reactor building to prevent radioactive dust in the building from being released into the air when the cover is removed. Of course, the whole point of the cover was to prevent said radioactive dust from being released, so one can be excused if one is skeptical about the official narrative, especially since this is a narrative in which the Japanese government, and Tepco, have been caught lying about the radioactive disaster on more occasions than even the USSR did about Chernobyl.
On May 15, a large crane lifted a spraying machine to insert a thin, long nozzle into the building through holes created on the top cover to spray a glue-like chemical to inhibit radioactive dust from spreading into the air.
This process will be repeated at 48 locations in the polyester lining over
the next week, before its removal commences, a process which will take more
than a year, as TEPCO begins retracting the roof cover on May 25 at the earliest to remove debris from the upper part of the building.
When the utility was removing debris from the No. 3 reactor building in the summer of 2013, a large amount of radioactive substances was released into the environment, fostering the public's distrust in the process. It also put TEPCO and the government in a corner: do nothing and prevent the further spread of radioactive dust, or take steps to mitigating the disaster and removing the radioactive nuclear fuel in the reactor building, while risking another major radioactive contamination.
TEPCO had initially announced the removal process would begin in July 2014, but then delayed it after radioactive material was detected in rice paddies near the plant. The spread of material was apparently caused by dust that rose during the removal of rubble surrounding reactor No. 3. TEPCO then devised this complex process to avoid a repetition of that incident.
Considering the "proficiency" and skills of TEPCO's engineering corps who have been humiliated in every step of the containment process, one can be certain the radioactive contamination is about be repeated and rice paddies in the vicinity are about to be irradiated once more because as EFE notes, it is currently rice planting season around the Fukushima plant. Fear not: TEPCO has pledged to suspend its work and inform surrounding local governments within 30 minutes when amounts of released dust and radiation exceed certain levels.
Since prior criminal performance and historical lying isn't a predictor of future gamma radiation levels, we are confident TEPCO will do just as pledged.
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Will this cover be impervious to a tsunami or storm surge? Doubt it... but who cares right? That'll never happen again. Just like it wasn't suppose to happen to begin with.
Ummmmm... did you miss the part where they're removing the cover?
Lice glow fast.
Gee, what a smart idea. Putting a giant hefty bag over a still-burning spent fuel pool that is on the brink of collapsing at any time. Sounds like these nips really care about saving their country.
Supposedly the spent fuel was going to be removed starting november 2013, and it would take a year. Let's hear how that's going and where they're storing it.
We don't need no water, let the mother fucker burn. Burn, mother fucker, burn.
Magazine Editor’s Final Words: Fukushima exponentially more dire than Chernoby
And yet there are new plants being built all over the world. What the fuck is the matter with these people. Are they so driven for profits now they cannot see the obvious problem. The nuclear power industry needs to have its leadership removed and a plan inacted to wind down and close all of these plants all over the world forever.
Please have you head scanned for a malformed amygdala. Your fears are irrational and reactionary. No wonder our policies from energy to foreign are so screwed, too many people buying into to media hype/fear machine. Highly radiactive isotopes were gone in first 30 days. Long term stuff does nothing - if you're worried about that, you should probably avoid flying on airplanes as you'll get an equal dose from cosmic sources at altitude. Most of the remaining isotopes are only harmless if injected. Alpha and Beta will not penetrate your skin. The human body evolved in a radioactie environment - the earth. "But muh ocean"...there is literally 10s of thousands of kilograms of radioactive material spilling out into the ocean at divergent boundaries every second of every day - Fukushima is a fart, and not even a loud one.
Storing it? It will probably be shipped to the US and buried at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. Seriously!
Will Fukushima Become An Extinction Level Event?
More likely they'll construct a GE PRISM reactor and use all their "spent fuel" and waste as energy.
"...Putting a giant hefty bag over a still-burning spent fuel pool that is on the brink of collapsing at any time..."
That was Unit #4, mkkby. That was the one they built the gigantic crane over to yank out whatever was left of the fuel rods. TEPCO claimed they've all been removed. They just dragged them down the road to the common spent fuel pool on site, waiting for the next tsunami/earthquake/TEPCO fuck-up to burst into flames.
They're pulling the plastic cover off of Unit #1. That's the one they used the muon imager on a few months ago and found - surprise - that none of the several hundred tons of melted core was anywhere to be found in the reactor vessel. It's either spread out on the containment floor or just ate it's way through several feet of concrete. Maybe both. They send a fancy robotic radiation-hardened snake inside to take a look in the containment basement, but the radiation was so high it roasted the poor little fellow. They still have no idea where the core went.
While the core was melting its way through the bottom of the reactor vessel, it also melted several tons of silver-indium-cadmium alloy control rods, a considerable amount of irradiated stainless steel and likely some concrete. So not only do you have uranium - plutonium - cesium - iodine lava, but it has dozens of other radioactive elements mixed in with it. And it's still hot - not like 2300C but hot enough to boil water. Since several tons of groundwater are constantly pouring through cracks in the reactor building, the corium is (we assume) being cooled enough so spontaneous fission is less likely. I think they've been pumping additional water into what's left of Unit #1's containment just to be sure.
All that cooling water is just flowing through openings between the reactor containment and down into the turbine hall. So the turbine hall is like a giant, open-air pool of nice, warm, highly-radioactive, highly-contaminated core cooling water constantly outgassing anything volatile or gaseous - like radioactive xenon, iodine and tritium. That's 24x7 since the day it exploded right up until today. They're trying to store and filter the water pumped from the turbine hall, but that effort has been little more than a clown show since day one. The filter units constantly break and they ran out of storage a long time ago. Most of it is leaking out through other cracks, tunnels, piping, etc. directly into the ocean. Worse of all, the turbine hall is not air tight, meaning all that radioactive steam and outgassing just blows out the assorted windows and holes into the atmosphere.
The radioactive dust is a problem, but they'll pretty much hose down every surface in the reactor building with green glue. They have no choice - there are still several hundred tons of spend fuel rods sitting in Unit #1's spend fuel pool. They have to get that out.
Some dust is going to be stirred up when the cover is removed, but nothing like the several tons that were launched into the atmosphere around Fukushima when the reactors blew. Most of that was cesium, and it's finally into the first two inches of mud or soil in the contaminated areas by now. It's not mobile and doesn't wash out. It loves to stick to the clay particles in the soil. It wasn't even started to be taken up by the plants roots until over a year after the meltdown. So peak cesium (and a laundry list of other interesting radioactive actinides) is actually now, especially for rice. You know - rice paddies, mud, etc. The roots saw a lot LESS of those radionuclides the first year or two after the contamination - most of it hadn't made it two inches down into the soil yet.
Whatever dust makes it into the air around Fukushima as a result of the Unit #1 cover removal will be insignificant as far as rice goes. It may dust up some leafy vegetables like lettuce or spinach, but the rice will be relatively unaffected. The rice will be more contaminated this year than in past years because of the original radionuclide heavy metal soil contamination that the roots are pulling up.
That's the way it worked around Chernobyl, too. Plants absorbed increasing amounts of soil radionuclides throught the roots for decades - I'm not sure if it has even leveled off by now. The radioactive dust blowing around there has dropped over the years, but the opposite happened with plants absorbing it through roods - it went up for years.
The amounts of other types of radionuclides in the contaminated soil around Fukushima are small, but there's a lot of them. Nobody has studied what the effects on humans will be from long-term ingestion at the same time of tiny quantities of radioactive cadmium, strontium, cobalt, iridium, silver, iron, nickel, zirconium, etc.
TEPCO and the government both said it's safe - they wouldn't lie to their own people. Probably less than one banana dose total.
That would be one big-assed banana.
Very interesting analysis, thanks for posting that.
You mention the radionuclides and soil absorption. I imagine half-lives are also an important factor, particularly in terms of human intake through food contamination.
For iodine I belive it's relatively short, and that most iodine contamination would come through dust and airborne contamination.
However cesium I think is sort of the Achille's heel of this whole thing, since its half life is what ... 40 years or something? So soil contamination and cesium in food is going to be the major concern.
Other radioactive isotopes are frightening though, particularly the heavier elements, but may stay localized to Japan provided there are no major disasters and no airborne contamination that spreads them across the Pacific.
Analysis? Oh no - I assure you Sheikh: that is 100% pure conspiracy theory. The Japanese government will not find any unsafe levels of cesium or strontium in Fukushima-area rice and it will be eagerly fed to hungry Japanese children in their school lunches.
If my comment was published on a Japanese web site, the Japanese National Police would send a takedown notice to the webmaster under The Japanese Ministry of Internal Affairs & Communication 2011 order of the Nuclear Power Safety Regulation Publicity Project for rumors harmful to Japanese national secuirty. Even if I didn't get a takedown notice, the webmasters and site administrators are obligated to report all comments critical of TEPCO's handling of Fukushima or the Japanese government's actions. For future 'corrective actions' against the author, like rendition and torture. It's all automated now, so site admins merely subscribe to one of the many Japanese content-censoring contractors created to report violations since the law was passed.
If I were a journalist in Japan and wrote that with any actual radiation measurements, I would be subject to up to five years in prison under anti-whistleblower and state secrecy laws. At the very least, I would be fired and blackballed from journalism in Japan forever. That law was cheered by the U.S. NRC as it was railroaded through the Japanese houses of Parliament. Liberty and freedom don't apply when it comes to information on nuclear anything - the fascists own that stuff.
In the U.S., the MSM happily self-censors anything regarding radiation so the peons don't get riled up, and the government simply says nothing about U.S. radiation levels. They don't really censor radiation levels, they just do clever stuff like turn off the EPA monitors for a day or two any time they detect elevated radiation. And, of course, they stopped monitoring Japanese food for radiation years ago because they could never find any.
They stopped measuring and reporting U.S. milk cesium levels something like a month after Fukushima. I think they tested West Coast seafood once or twice a few years back, but not since then. See? It's not censorship if they don't measure it! Eventually, it will be against the law ('Patriot Act' or similar treasonous nonsesense) for private citizens in the U.S. to measure or report radiation levels themselves. It's not even a matter if 'if' but 'when'.
And God help us if a nuclear boiler in the U.S. blows - they will pre-emptively round up people on 'the list' and microwave them to make sure dangerous 'conspiracy theories' are not distributed on the internet. They've already been testing the capability to block all the blogging sites. Jade Helm should take care of the remaining insurgents. Those fucking reptilians - they just never give up, do they?
For the bored or interested, one more repost of a September 2013 attempt at a comprehensive analysis.
Nothing much has changed.....
http://jopy.org/jimn.pdf
I'd say the highlights are:
Have a nice weekend
Damn, that's impressive Jim!
So Fukushima releases were at least 3x that of Chernobyl? You're going on 'the list' for that.
Good news: in the four years since the meltdown, a massive 10% of the 125 quadrillion Becquerels of cesium-137 and strontium-90 deposited on Japan's soil has already decayed! There's only 111 quadrillion Becquerels left, give or take. Well, burning the radioactive trash probably deposited a few quadrillion more becquerels. And there have been upwards revisions to the deposition estimates. And stuff is still spewing out of the site. And the highest concentrations have just now made it down to the root zones.
But screw all that conspiratorial mumbo-jumbo. A 10% decay is still 10% - that's like a bajillion Becquerels gone forever. Yay! Eat your rice up, kids! It's bound to be 10% less carcinogenic - don't be pussies!
Japan...future storage facility for the world's fuel rods
Fukushima Farmers.
Kinda like Titanic Teamsters
Wait, what? There was a nuclear incident? Why haven't I heard of it? If it isn't on teevee it didn't happen.
Looks like they are building some sort of experimental greenhouse. I guess the radioactivity will help in developing new mutant strains plus keeping things nice and warm in winter...
That's why I only buy California rice......
You must like dry rice.
Buh dum tsss
http://youtu.be/6zXDo4dL7SU
Where do you think all the radiation went? Perhaps they can hose down the rice with extra water .......oh wait.
Try the Louisianna Corexit brand rice. Lip-eatin' good.
Wash the dust off first. Wait.
Maybe Godzilla was a documentary slipped in from a dimensional time portal.
Worry about people like Obama and his BIS handlers . They are far more deadly than a radiation monster.
The news just gets more surreal.
Next year, President Hillary Clinton will proclaim that radiation from Fukushima was initially a problem, but now it's not. And the people will cheer in delight, relieved that this will not affect their lives. "Oh good," they will think collectively. "That was gonna put me in a bad mood."
How do you wake a country from a coma?
War at home.
"How do you wake a country from a coma?
Start shooting at them? I know some people who will take notice. Some are just too fucking stupid.
New energy saving strategy from TEPCO for consumers: Glow in the dark rice.
It's lomantic doncha know?
Confirmation Bias for the ZH Dunning-Kruger set.
Dig it; ignorance is bliss...rabid ignorance is more bliss.
You may want to stay away from the sake that comes from there. The green bottles they come in were clear at one point.
CounterPunch by Proxy learned of the Zio infiltration of the ownership and regulators of TEPCO. The casualties will be harvested of their organs (sneaky fucking Khazars found out how to neutralize radiation) and the irradiated rice, by contract and sole source, are destined for Uncle Ben's. That is all...
4 years later, they come up an idea identical with CCCP's which only covers 'dust', water leaking continues and Pacific will take them all.
Welcome to reality, 'AChinese'.
Bear in mind, China is on the eastern side of the Pacific Ocean.
Wasn't there a war between the Japanese and the Russians, back in about 1898?
Chernoybl is located at the headwaters of the river that supplies fresh water to Kiev, Ukraine. It's inland, though (not on the coast of the world's largest ocean).
PROBABLY BANNED link in China:
http://enenews.com/
Of the world's 7 billion people, 6.999 billion are NOT aquiescent.
Welcome to ZeroHedge.
Tradgedy may be avoided due to new mutated strain of rice plant. https://youtu.be/ixpn43v9dm4
AH, 'midnight showings'!
I have several BIC lighters. I'm waiting for the correct time to show my fealty to 'The Rocky Horror Picture Show'. (No, not really. it's both juvenile and pedantic.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbBk0Y6cQZQ
Oh.
Wrong link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VH3AlPmavDk
Number One Reactor at the Fukushima Daiichi Complex was only 'damaged'.
SEE? We're gonna take the roof off! (Tokyo Electric Power COmpany)
That's very reassuring.
I was led to believe by the conspiracy theorists (with live video cameras) that it was obliterated; destroyed, suffered 'catastrophic damage'; and 'blew the fuck up'. Since the evident detonations were supposedly 'sub-sonic', I guess #3 was worse (but only a little, because it was supersonic, but just barely). Of course, the Ice Wall the japanese have NOW ERECTED around the bay will stop any pesky 'free radicals' from escaping when they rip the temporary roof off. Stay calm, and don't worry about eating the rice. I promise, it won't hurt you.
I like bananas, and they have more radiation than the Fukushima complex could ever generate (semiquote from Ann Coulter). Those rice farmers have absolutely nothing to worry about. Matt Lauer told us that he was actually live, on the scene, standing on the roof of Fukushima Daiichi No. one, when the blast wave came, and he described it as a 'warm, comfortable wind'. I'm awaiting the Messiah Obama's declaration here in the CONUS that a state of emergency has passed.
Sometimes you eat the rice, sometimes the rice eats you.
Here is a secret you'll be hearing lot's about soon...please keep it quiet!!! Nuclear is NOT as dangerous as you have been lead to believe.
Why? because it would have destroy the energy hierarchy establishment. But in a world where "debt quality" can not be sustained without serious changes...you will now learn the truth about nuclear energy. No serious dangers in Fukushima or any other reactor.
It's been an illusion all along.
It's not what's in the wind that's dangerous, but what is underground and leaking that is dangerous.
Hey, but what the hell, Japan could use another atrium. What's one for a devastated nuclear core?!
Liberty is a demand. Tyranny is submission.
Most people do not realize that oil interests torpedoed nuclear energy and made it unsafe. The oil interests mounted a massive misinformation (lies) campaign to convince people that nuclear energy is unsafe. This resulted in regulations (always destructive for the benefit of another interest) that forced those desiring to generate using nuclear to scale up. Scaling up increases risks exponentially (cubed). A plant that is double the size required otherwise, so as to make economic sense, is 8 time riskier. Now a plant that is 10 times the required size...
The safety of nuclear power at much smaller scales can be seen by the navy's use of it with few incidents.
BTW: The "Peak Oil" speech was given to nuclear interests as a motivational speech for the future of the industry locked in a war with oil's entrenched interests.
One rotten irradiated apple destroys the whole batch.
Also with ship-based nuclear propulsion, there have been no major incidents that we know of because 1) none of the ships has been attacked with conventional weapons systems leading to meltdowns and 2) military secrecy is different from civilian nuclear facilites.
There were problems particularly with the early systems (USS Enterprise, for example) but we didn't hear much about it.
Not to mention that one type of nuclear energy is very different to another. PRISM and AP1000s are simpler, safer designs (though, truly just a stop-gap); LFTR is an even safer method with a fraction of the waste (and no pressurized containment). You can poke a hole in the side (good luck with that) and it will just spill out into secondary containment. Who doesn’t want a reactor that can be turned off (made inert) with the flip of a switch?
The anti-nuclear noise machine operates on fear and a misunderstanding of isotope decay chains, absorption, relativity to natural sources, and other general ignorance. Yes, 60 year old designs should have been done away with long ago. They would have had the industry gotten a fair deal on permitting and approval – not to mention politics getting involved and diverting funding toward inferior designs/concepts.
ZH has become, especially in regards to articles on Fukushima, an echo chamber of conspiracy theories. I think somebody else mentioned Dunning-Kruger. If the Tylers really want to make posts on nuclear power, physics experiments, climate change and the like, they should probably get in contact with someone to write for them who isn’t shooting for Fox News levels of fear mongering.
http://fukushima-diary.com/
and
http://enenews.com/
for your daily news on Fukushima and other nuclear issues.
New, IMPROVED, "Glows in Dark", RICE!
You'll Love It!!!
Glow in the dark rice pudding coming Xmas 2015.
Any bets on how long after they pull the top off until the next 6-8.something hits?
Monsanto must be all over this. Must. Not. Allow. GM rice competition...
The 'idiotic' ice wall has NOT been abandoned:
"Apr. 28, 2015 - Updated 11:59 UTC+2
Japan's nuclear regulators have approved a plan by the operator of the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant to build an underground wall of ice to stem the buildup of contaminated water in reactor buildings.
Tokyo Electric Power Company plans to freeze soil around the No.1 to No.4 reactor buildings to create an ice wall 1.5 kilometers long. The wall is intended to keep groundwater from seeping into the reactor buildings.
The utility began work on the project last June. Workers drove pipes into the ground for containing liquid that will be frozen.
On Tuesday, the Nuclear Regulation Authority approved TEPCO's plan to start trials on Thursday to freeze the liquid at 18 locations.
If the ice forms as planned, TEPCO will start freezing the liquid at other locations, pending government approval, to eventually create a wall of ice. But it's unclear how long it will take to complete the ice wall due to its unprecedented scale."
http://www.fukushima-is-still-news.com/2015/04/ice-wall.html (original story from NHK news)
But yes, the ice wall idea IS idiotic. Tepco could have almost finished a sarcophagus for the entire site by now if they had started work immediately after the disaster.
The Japanese never used to store the waste, they dumped it back into the reactor....which is what you should do.
There is ZERO chance of engineering containment for thousands of years. Its stupid, can't be done and should not even be attempted. You get rid of the real bad ass isotopes the same way you created them, fission, dumpt them back into the reactor. Get waste products like cesium and iodine, we can deal with those. Cesiun has a half life of 30 years so after 180 years the mass of the waste is down by 64 times. Iodine is only 90 days so its easy.
Of course to do this you need a nuclear fuel reprocessing industry. An industry that was bankrupted by the peanut famer via executive order. The order was reversed by reagan but everyone was bankrupt by then.
You need to reprocess the waste, that is what the japanese were doing....until the backup generator in the basement was flooded with sea water. Could of happened to anyone. Who knew water flowed down hill? Education is never free.
Squid
Yes, WHO on earth could have known that basements can be flooded .....
Did you hear the one about the Babushkas (of Chernobyl); http://thebabushkasofchernobyl.com/ted-talk
At last, a chance to get bitten by a radioactive spider or to get radioactive substance into your eyes...finally the dream comes true.
With all the trillions being spent on this disaster, wouldn't you think Tepco might be able to pay the rice farmers an annual stipend equal to the value of rice production from those fields - such that they do not have to plant anything?
Seems like it would be better not to bother getting electricity from nuclear reactors if this is what you end up doing most of the time.
One small step for the salesman and one giant devastating step for mankind.
Humans: a species that had the ability to market their ideas to others of their species who in turn had less resources, and less expertise, to determine what they were buying.
Zero Hedge #Fukushima
Ye got me. ::chuckles::