Tuesday 22 October 2013

Fukushima Update - 10/21/2013

Fukushima Workers: There was a collapse at plant due to typhoon
  • Not revealed by Tepco
  • Worry that upcoming storm to cause more damage



21 October, 2013


Recent tweets from Fukushima Daiichi workers with summary translation by Fukushima Diary:
Two Fukushima workers commented on Twitter that the previous Typhoon Wipha caused a slope in Fukushima plant area to collapse. The slope faces the main street, and the earth and sand blockaded the street. Also, there was a part to have had a subsidence. [...] The worker added there are more slopes in the area and they may collapse due to the next Typhoon [...]

Specific Tweets translated by Google:
  • @sunnysunnynismo, Oct. 19, 2013: Pattern collapse due to typhoon at the Fukushima Daiichi premises has not been press releases
  • @Happy11311, Oct. 19, 2013: Uh-oh? I did not press! It was learned for the first time to see tweets of Sunny’s. I’ve had also place the road much would have been blocked, was depressed (> _ <) after law could face there had collapsed …. Next week, I wonder if the public? Typhoon No. 27 is also a worry about next week, and slope is likely to collapse still, and I wonder … I’m worried about.
  • @Happy11311, Oct. 19, 2013: [...] I think restoration work is dangerous’ s rain today where it left mudslides after, that it is not doing, but disciple no choice but to pray that the damage is not expanded


Fukushima plant area had collapse and subsidence due to the last Typhoon / No press release


Fukushima Diary,
21 October, 2013



Related to this article.. All β density of groundwater jumped up by 6557 times after the Typhoon / 400,000,000 Bq/m3 highest ever [URL]
Two Fukushima workers commented on Twitter that the previous Typhoon “WIPHA” caused a slope in Fukushima plant area to collapse.
The slope faces the main street, and the earth and sand blockaded the street. Also, there was a part to have had a subsidence.
Those workers are surprised because there was no press release from Tepco about this.
The worker added there are more slopes in the area and they may collapse due to the next Typhoon that may hit eastern Japan this weekend.
(cf, Next typhoon to hit eastern Japan this weekend / “Very strong” again [URL 2])





LA Times: “Plutonium having melted and dropping somewhere” is suspected to be causing contamination of underground water at Fukushima  - Japan nuclear professor

21 October, 2013


Los Angeles Times, October 20, 2013: [...] 300 tons of radioactive wastewater was pouring into the ocean each day from the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant [Tepco now says 400 tons of radioactive groundwater is flowing into the Pacific every day -Japan Times]. It’s unclear how long the massive volume has been leaking from underneath the damaged reactors [...] “It is unclear how the underground water is being contaminated,” [Kenji Araki, a nuclear engineering guest professor at the Fukushima National College of Technology] said, speculating that it’s the result of plutonium near the reactor core having melted and dropping somewhere inside the reactor. Pinpointing leaks is very difficult, Araki said. […]


Arab News, Oct. 16, 2013: Nadeem Qureshi, M.I.T.-trained engineer: “Three hundred tons [400 tons, see above] of toxic highly radioactive water from the site continues to leak into the Pacific Ocean every day. The plant operator — Tokyo Electric Power Company — admitted recently that it has “lost control of Fukushima”. [...] The Fukushima incident is emblematic of the problem with nuclear power. A serious accident results in the release of radiation into the environment. And this is the good news. The real problem is that nuclear fuel and waste products generated in nuclear reactors remain radioactive from 10,000 to tens of millions of years. For example the half life — a measure of the rate of natural decay of radioactive materials — of the waste product Plutonium 239 is 24,000 years, and that of Neptunium 237 is two million years. When these waste products are released into the environment in an accident they are there to stay.”





Powerful Typhoon Francisco on track for Fukushima
  • Typhoon Lekima develops in Pacific
  • Concern storms may collide, “It’s called the Fujiwara effect”
  • Both could hit east coast of Japan later in week

21 October, 2013

Mainichi, Oct. 21, 2013: Another powerful typhoon [...] is taking a similar course to that of Typhoon Wipha, which caused massive damage to Oshima Island and other parts of the Kanto region around Tokyo. [...] The Meteorological Agency is urging the public to pay close attention to information released on the typhoon.


Reuters, Oct. 21, 2013: Super typhoon Francisco is forecast to strike Japan as a tropical storm at about 09:00 GMT on 25 October. [...] Francisco is expected to bring 1-minute maximum sustained winds to the region of around 101 km/h (63 mph). Wind gusts in the area may be considerably higher. [...]
Arirang News, Oct. 21, 2013: There looks to be two tropical storms, Francisco and Lekima, which are expected to hit the east coast of Japan around Thursday. As the storm may indirectly affect Korea’s weather, our viewers in Korea should check back in for updates as the week progresses.
Korea Times, Oct. 21, 2013: [...] According to the Korea Meteorological Administration (KMA) though, Typhoons Francisco and Lekima will most likely hit Japan [...] Typhoon Francisco [...] packs winds gusts over 169 kilometers an hour. The agency expected that it will head north, but may veer to the East Sea, making landfall near Tokyo. [...] Typhoon Lekima was detected five days later. Though it was small-sized and weak, the KMA expected it may pick up strength and develop into a severe tropical storm (STS). [...] The KMA [...] said the two typhoons could meet. “When two or more typhoons collide, they affect each other’s path and strength. It’s called the Fujiwara effect,” said weather forecaster Hur Jin-ho. “Though we are expecting that they are moving along their own paths, there still is the possibility that the two could change course,” he said. [...]


Japan Times: “Plague of radioactive water” from Fukushima
  • Will need monitoring for next 100 years, maybe even longer
  • WSJ: Alarm over recent Tepco alert, could be quite bad; Yttrium at 200,000 Bq/liter in groundwater

21 October, 2013


WSJ, Oct. 21, 2013: In an alarming Friday-morning alert, the operator of the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear-power plant said that radiation levels on Oct. 17 had spiked some 6,500 times higher overnight, at a well [...] It’s a lot harder to figure out just how bad that creeping contamination is, however. JRT’s preliminary answer: It could be quite bad [...] Tepco tests water [...] using a quick method that measures something it calls “zen-beta’’ in Japanese – or “all-beta’’ in English. [...] Friday’s alert said that the zen-beta in the contaminated well was 400,000 Bq per liter – a record-high measurement. [...] it turns out that none of it is tritium, since the type of quick measurement used for the beta-radiation check isn’t sensitive enough to pick up tritium, says a Tepco spokesman. What’s more, Tepco has found that the zen-beta from the kind of water that was stored in the leaky tank is generally half from strontium-90 and half from a radioactive form of an element called yttrium, which is formed from strontium-90 in the process of nuclear decay. That would suggest there could be 200,000 Bq per liter of strontium-90 in the well – more than 6,600 times the allowed emission limit.


The Japan Times, Oct. 20, 2013: The plague of radioactive water at the wrecked Fukushima No. 1 power plant has renewed fears both in Japan and abroad over the contamination of seafood and the habitat it comes from. The government is trying to reassure consumers that all fish that find their way to market are safe [...] [Hideo Yamazaki of Kinki University] warned that Japan will need to keep monitoring various radioactive materials from Fukushima No. 1 for 100 years — and possibly even longer — as work to scrap the four damaged reactors stretches on for decades.




Rainwater Problem Hits Japan’s Closed Nuclear Plant
The operator of Japan’s wrecked nuclear plant said Monday that rainwater from a weekend storm became contaminated as it collected behind barriers meant to stop radiation leaks. The toxic water overflowed those barriers at several locations, with some of it possibly spilling into the Pacific Ocean.





21 October, 2013

It was the latest in a litany of lapses and aggravations for the problem-plagued cleanup of the Fukushima Daiichi plant.

The operator, the Tokyo Electric Power Company, or Tepco, said water from heavy rain Sunday had accumulated behind foot-high concrete walls that encircle clusters of storage tanks. Tepco built those barriers to contain spills from the storage tanks, a problem that has led to intense public criticism of the company.

However, on Sunday the barriers acted as dams to trap the rainwater into unintended ponds. Water levels in 11 of those ponds rose high enough to spill over the barriers, Tepco said. It said some of the spilled water may have flowed down a drainage ditch into the Pacific outside the plant’s artificial harbor.

After the rain, Tepco said it tested water in the ponds that overflowed and found that a half-dozen were contaminated with levels of radioactive strontium-90 above the limit of 10 becquerels per liter set by regulators for releasing water into the sea. Radiation levels at the most contaminated site were 71 times that limit, Tepco said.

Releases of strontium are particularly worrisome because it can collect in human bones and possibly cause leukemia, experts say. Tepco did not say where the strontium had originated, though the most likely candidate appeared to be radioactive particles scattered on the ground, possibly by the explosions that followed the triple meltdown in March 2011.

Another puzzle was why the rainfall Sunday, which the Japan Meteorological Agency measured at about four inches, was enough to overwhelm the foot-high barriers. On Monday, Tepco offered one possible explanation, saying the barriers had already trapped water during a typhoon that swept through eastern Japan last week.

Tepco has installed pumps designed to drain rainwater into tanks, where it is tested for radiation before it is released into the sea. However, the pumps appeared unable to cope with the large amounts of rain dumped by the typhoon, so when the rain struck Sunday, water levels were still up to nine inches deep in some spots, Tepco said.


Latest on Fukushima... 18 Oct, 2013



Thom Hartmann talks with Kevin Kamps, Nuclear Waste Watch Dog-Beyond Nuclear

Website: www.beyondnuclear.org



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