Tuesday 1 October 2013

Fukushima - media finally gets it right

Golf Balls Fall Short Coping With 21st Century Disasters



30 September, 2013


Diaper liner, sawdust, golf balls and shredded tires -- these are some of the items used to try and contain the oil and nuclear disasters that marked the end of this century’s first decade and the start of the second.



Sawdust and absorbent polymer were employed to plug radioactive water leaks at Japan’s Fukushima atomic station after it was wrecked by an earthquake and tsunami in 2011. Didn’t work. BP Plc (BP/) tried golf balls and rubber scrap in 2010 to plug its Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico in what became the biggest oil spill in U.S. history. Didn’t work, either.


Chucking diapers and golf balls at multibillion dollar calamities shows methods to deal with failure are primitive at best even as the global hunt for energy enters new frontiers of risk. Disasters beyond the coping abilities of a single company -- or even a country -- have prompted suggestions that a global body with military-scale technical resources is needed.



“We need an international agency that specializes in stuff like this,” Andrew DeWit, a professor of political economy atTokyo’s Rikkyo University, said in an interview. “World armies and navies could form the basis for such a task force, being the only organizations with the infrastructure and manpower to cope.”



Rising demand for energy is pushing oil drillers into remote and deeper waters from the Arctic and Africa to offshore Brazil. While nuclear power is falling out of favor in the U.S. and Europe, earthquake-prone China is building 29 reactors, the most of any country, to add to the 17 it already operates, according to the World Nuclear Association.

Black Swans



“There’s more and more pressure to take risks, and when you do, you are leaving yourself open to black swan events,” said Gerald Graham, who assisted Canada’s response to the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill and runs Worldocean Consulting in Victoria, British Columbia. “In extremely remote areas, the risks become greater and the chances of a spill or blowout increase.”



After a tsunami from the Japan quake knocked out power atTokyo Electric Power Co. (9501)’s Fukushima station, engineers resorted to makeshift pumps and fire hoses to get water into the overheating reactor cores in a failed attempt to prevent the meltdown of three reactors. The radiation leaks forced the evacuation of 160,000 people.
When BP’s leased Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded 40 miles (64 kilometers) off the Louisiana coast in the Gulf of Mexico killing 11 workers, the company used so-called “junk shots” of golf balls and scrap rubber in a failed attempt to plug the 50-million barrel oil field.


Red Adair

Legendary oil-well firefighter Paul “Red” Adair used junk shots to help extinguish Kuwaiti well fires set by Saddam Hussein’s retreating troops in 1991. Yet Adair, depicted in John Wayne’s 1968 film “Hellfighters,” used the technique on land, not almost a mile under the ocean.

Macondo gushed about 4.9 million barrels of crude into the sea from April 20 till when it was capped on July 15 by a stack of valves inserted over the top. The leak was finally sealed in September by drilling a second well into Macondo to pump in mud and concrete. The disaster will cost BP more than $40 billion in cleanup costs and damages. London-based BP spokesman David Nicholas declined to comment for this story.

“The risks are increasing rapidly as we go ever deeper,” said Charles Perrow, a professor emeritus at Yale University who studied the BP spill and Japan crisis as a specialist in industrial accidents. “Really large disasters aren’t that frequent, so preparing for them is difficult, almost an afterthought.”

Three Continents

In the nuclear industry, the Fukushima meltdowns mean Asia joins two of the world’s other continents as a site of a major civil atomic accident. The others are the 1986 Chernobyl disaster in the former Soviet Union and the partial reactor meltdown at Three Mile Island in the U.S. in 1979.

Regulators have failed to require oil and gas explorers to have sufficient plans to respond to crises, said Tina Hunter, director of the Center for International Minerals and Energy Law at the University of Queensland in Brisbane.
“We absolutely need an independent international body that plays a leading role,” said Hunter, who has advised governments on oil regulations and studied the BP disaster. “There need to be new methods and new responses for new areas that should be tested prior to full-scale exploration,” she said. “Until they do that, they shouldn’t be drilling.”
Regulators and energy companies have taken steps to try to avoid a repeat of the Macondo disaster.

Gulf Rules

Exxon Mobil Corp., Chevron Corp. (CVX), Royal Dutch Shell Plc (RDSA) and ConocoPhillips committed $1 billion to design a system to contain deepwater spills in the Gulf. The group they formed, Marine Well Containment Co., completed an initial system in 2011 and is developing technology for use in waters as deep as 10,000 feet, its website shows.

 Marine Well Containment referred questions to Oil Spill Response Ltd., an industry-owned group with more than 160 members ranging from Anadarko Petroleum Corp. (APC) to Tullow Oil Plc. (TLW) Oil Spill declined to comment on its activities in an e-mailed response. It provides equipment and international support to help companies respond to oil spills, according to its website.
Drilling regulations changed after Macondo as did rules on maintenance and testing of equipment and blow-out preventers on drilling rigs, said Kevin Robison, general manager of production facilities at Helix Energy Solutions (HLX), which tackles oil spills in the Gulf of Mexico.

 “So all these variables are positive changes to make the industry and drilling safer,” he said in a Sept. 20 phone interview from Houston. Helix’s containment equipment should be able to respond to a spill in a couple of days, he said.

Beyond Gulf

These efforts are mostly focused on the Gulf of Mexico, where output from federal waters accounted for about 20 percent of U.S. oil production in 2012, and which has a massive energy infrastructure and response capability.
Elsewhere problems can quickly cascade when accidents occur in harsher, more remote areas, said Graham, the consultant in Canada, who’s concerned the industry is focused more on “putting out the last fire” than preparing for the next.
“It’s reached the point you have to ask yourself, ‘Are we not testing fate a little too much?’” Graham said.

 Environmental groups have criticized plans by companies including Shell and OAO Gazprom (GAZP) to explore the Arctic for oil and gas, saying spills above the Arctic circle would be almost impossible to clean up. The Hague-based Shell halted operations off Alaska after accidents in 2012.

Russian Aid

In recognition of the growing risk, an international conference for oil and gas regulators is scheduled for next month in Perth, Western Australia. The theme: preventing the next “black swan, a large-scale event that is unforeseen and potentially catastrophic,” according to the Australian regulator’s website.
Before Fukushima, Chernobyl was ranked as the world’s worst nuclear accident. Russia offered its experience from dealing with Chernobyl to help Japan with the Fukushima calamity, said Vladimir Asmolov, first deputy director general of Rosenergoatom, the state-owned Russian nuclear utility. Talks with Japan continue, said Asmolov, who added:

“In our globalized nuclear industry we don’t have national accidents, they are all international.”

Official blasts Japan Gov’t over Fukushima: Such immoral people
  • Let radioactive substances flow out freely and said nothing while contaminating ocean
  • It’s just absurd
  • Now they’re trying to cover up the whole thing


30 September, 2013


Arirang News, Sept. 30, 2013:  Seoul on Monday blasted Tokyo for its attempt to downplay and cover up the radiation leak of its Fukushima nuclear facility in 2011. Korea’s Minister of Oceans and Fisheries Yoon Jin-sook, criticized the Japanese government for its “immoral” acts and said Tokyo had a duty to inform its neighbors of allowing radioactive water to contaminate the ocean.


Yonhap, Sept. 30, 2013: [...] “We did not know that Japan would let the contaminated water leak. We thought this cannot be allowed while our people’s fears were growing,” Yoon said while meeting with reporters here. “Japan must have a responsibility to inform (us and others). (Japan) was not providing any information while letting all the contaminated water flow freely. It is just absurd,” she added. [...] Japan will not likely file a suit, she said, “because Japan is trying to cover up the whole thing.” “Japan appears to be glossing over its people, too,” she added.


Kyodo, Sept. 30, 2013: [...] “We wondered if we had to protect such immoral people under diplomatic protocols, and so we did it (placed an import ban) as soon as we could,” Oceans and Fisheries Minister Yoon Jin Sook was quoted as telling reporters. [...] there is growing concern over leaks of contaminated water at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant.







Tepco dropped water level gauge into groundwater observation hole / “Can’t measure the water level there anymore”


30 September, 2013



The contaminated water meets groundwater in Fukushima plant area, and it’s leaking to the sea.

In order to stop the flow, Tepco is building the impervious wall on the seaside of reactor3 like other reactors.
Because the groundwater level rises by stopped flowing to the sea, they measure the groundwater level in two observation holes.
However they announced they dropped one of the two groundwater level gauges into the hole, so they can’t publish the rising groundwater level data anymore in the press conference of 9/30/2013.

The cause of “dropping the gauge into the hole” wasn’t explained. They didn’t mentioned alternative measuring way either.

Fallout level in Tokyo was the 3rd highest in Japan this August / 5.2 MBq/km2・month


30 September, 2013


On 9/30/2013, Nuclear Regulation Authority published the report of fallout level of this August in every prefecture.
From the report, the fallout level was the 3rd highest in Tokyo in the measurement term. The reading was 5.2 MBq/km2・month, which was 56% of the 2nd highest reading of Ibaraki prefecture.
The highest reading was 672 MBq/km2・month in Fukushima prefecture.

 

Motegi sides with locals calling to scrap Fukushima Daini nuke plant



30 September, 2013


Industry minister Toshimitsu Motegi on Monday suggested he supports local calls to scrap the Fukushima Daini nuclear power plant, located near the accident-stricken Fukushima Daiichi complex.


"Thinking about the current feelings of the people in Fukushima Prefecture, I don't think we can treat Fukushima Daini in the same way as other nuclear power plants," the economy, trade and industry minister told a parliamentary committee.


The Daini complex is located 12 kilometers south of the Daiichi plant. The four-reactor plant achieved a stable state of cold shutdown shortly after the natural disasters in 2011.


But he also said plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. should make a decision by "comprehensively" considering discussions on Japan's energy policy, local opinion and other factors.


Locals and the prefectural government of Fukushima have been calling for all 10 reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi and Daini plants to be scrapped in the wake of the nuclear crisis, triggered by a huge earthquake and tsunami in March 2011.


TEPCO is already moving to scrap the Nos. 1 to 4 units at Fukushima Daiichi, which were severely damage in the crisis. But it has not been clear about the fate of the remaining six reactors in the northeastern prefecture.


Earlier this month, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe urged TEPCO to scrap the Nos. 5 and 6 reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi plant that avoided meltdowns, saying that the utility should focus more on the plant's cleanup efforts.


Fukushima Daiichi Cs 137 dispersion model from NOAA

The simulation from NOAA's HYSPLIT model shows a continuous release of tracer particles at a rate of 100 per hour representing the Cesium-137 emitted from Fukushima Daiichi.

Each change in particle color (red, orange, yellow, cyan, green, blue, violet, magenta) represents a decrease in radioactivity by a factor of 10.

Radioactivity decreases only due to wet and dry deposition.

Decay is not a factor for Cesium in this short duration simulation compared to its long-half life.

The air concentration would be computed from the particle density so it is only partially related to the color scale. Emissions occurred from 12-31 March, but the particles are followed through the end of April using meteorological data from the 1-degree resolution NOAA global analyses.

The maximum cesium emissions on March 15th are shown by the red color and represent a particle activity of 5E+12 Bq.

More information about how this modeling was done can be found at:


 

Alternative news outlets for Fukushima:

‪http://enenews.com/
‪http://fukushima-diary.com/category/d...
‪http://ex-skf.blogspot.com/
‪http://enformable.com/enformologue/



YouTube channels:

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Kaku: Gov’t will have to send military to Fukushima plant — Japan Professors: It’s a “slow-motion nuclear war”; World’s militaries are only ones able to cope with such disaster (AUDIO)



Bloomberg, Sept. 29, 2013: “We need an international agency that specializes in stuff like this,” Andrew DeWit, a professor of political economy at Tokyo’s Rikkyo University, said in an interview. “World armies and navies could form the basis for such a task force, being the only organizations with the infrastructure and manpower to cope.” [...] After a tsunami from the Japan quake knocked out power at Tepco’s Fukushima station, engineers resorted to makeshift pumps and fire hoses to get water into the overheating reactor cores in a failed attempt to prevent the meltdown of three reactors.


AP, Sept. 26, 2013: Robert Jacobs, professor at the Hiroshima Peace Institute, sees similarities between Hiroshima and Fukushima, calling the latter a “slow-motion nuclear war.” He said the cumulative radiation dosage from Fukushima could be quite significant because the leaks are likely to continue for decades.


Michio Kaku interviewed by Art Bell, Sept. 16, 2013 (At 46:30 in): Tepco unfortunately is sort of like the 3 stooges operating a nuclear power plant, Moe, Larry and Curly chasing each other around the control room hitting each other over the head. We have a bunch of incompetents running that nuclear power plant. I think that eventually the government’s going to have to take over […] and call out the military. […] Admit that the utility is totally outclassed, outgunned, and that they should perhaps bring in the military. […] You realize they keep dumping cold water on the reactor and it flows out because the loop is not closed. It’s an open loop. Until they close the loop they’re going to dump more water and they’re going to create more radioactive water as a consequence. Full interview here




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1 comment:

  1. MCA1 October 2013 at 13:41

    safe shutdown ALL nuclear power stations
    while it is still safe to do so.

    ReplyDelete

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