Remember Fukushima: The accident is not over via the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists

Posted on 2021/03/15 by nfield

By Tatsujiro Suzuki | March 11, 2021

On February 13, 2021, an earthquake of magnitude 7.3 struck again from the offshore of Fukushima prefecture. It reminded many people in Japan of the Tohoku Great Earthquake, which happened on March 11, 2011, and of the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear accident. Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO), which manages the Fukushima site, reported on February 19 that it found a drop in water levels in Units 1 and 3, which suggests that there could be damage to the containment vessels of those reactors due to the 2021 earthquake. So far, no serious consequences have been reported, but if the situation deteriorates, there could be radioactive release from the site again.

TEPCO also reported that the machinery for treating radioactive water from the Fukushima side—more specifically, multi-nuclide removal equipment (ALPS) sample tanks—and tanks holding water that has been treated were displaced a maximum of 19 centimeters by the earthquake. This incident illustrated the difficulties of managing the contaminated water that has been accumulating on site. Although releasing the water into the sea is technically considered a best option, the fact that contaminated water contains highly radioactive materials makes this operation difficult. In August 2018, it was found that some treated water still contained radioactive materials beyond the regulatory standards. Local fishermen, worrying about the possible impact on their fishing business, strongly opposed the plan to release the water containing tritium into the sea.

Last year, the government announced that residents can return to hometowns where the average radiation level is below 20 milliSieverts per year, which is still much higher than the normal regulatory standard of one milliSievert. About 36,000 people are still away from home, and the number of people returned to their hometowns ranges from a mere 8.6 percent to 84.5 percent, as of March 2020. Reconstruction of life in Fukushima is still not completed.

The safety culture of Japan’s nuclear industry may also be eroding again. TEPCO reported in February 2021 that in September 2020 there was an illegal entry by an employee into the control room of Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant. Fuketa Toyoshi, chair of Japan’s Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA), criticized TEPCO, saying that “it shows that the staff are not educated, and the high awareness of security is not widespread.”

Finally, lost public trust has not been recovered yet. Despite the establishment of an independent nuclear regulator and much tougher regulatory standards, only 21.6 percent of the Japanese public believes that it is possible to secure safety of nuclear power plants. Only 12.3 percent of the public support either maintaining or expanding nuclear power, and 60.6 percent support either a phaseout of nuclear power or the immediate shutdown of all nuclear reactors. Yet the government and the nuclear industry have hardly changed their attitudes towards nuclear power. On December 25, 2020 the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry released a report detailing Tokyo’s “Green Growth Strategy” for achieving carbon neutrality by 2050, which includes nuclear power as a “growth sector.” It seems that government and nuclear industry may have forgotten the accident.

[…]

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For the NPT to work, plutonium has to go　via the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists

Posted on 2021/03/15 by nfield

By Victor Gilinsky, Henry Sokolski | March 15, 2021

The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), whose tenth review conference is coming up in August, is in trouble, and not only because of the crescendo of complaints about the failure of the nuclear-armed states to implement nuclear disarmament. The treaty is threatened with irrelevancy because its controls have not kept up with the times. It was drafted over 50 years ago, when it was widely believed that nuclear energy represented the future and would soon take over the generation of electricity. Not surprisingly, countries put few treaty restrictions on access to technology or materials other than to impose international inspection, and even that was circumscribed. We now have a more realistic view of the dangers of access to fuels that are also nuclear explosives (plutonium and highly enriched uranium) and also of the limited economic utility of these fuels for powering reactors. If we want an effective NPT, we have to eliminate these dangerous materials from civilian nuclear power programs. Dealing with uranium enrichment is complicated because nuclear power plants use enriched uranium fuel, but that should not hold us back from eliminating the danger we can eliminate—plutonium.

[…]

It has since turned out that all of the “expert” thinking about plutonium-fueled fast breeder reactors taking over electricity production was wrong. Contrary to the projections of the 1960s, nuclear energy’s prospects are limited, uranium is not scarce, extracting plutonium from irradiated uranium fuel is hugely expensive, and the plutonium-fueled reactors are expensive to build, which eliminated the economic arguments for the so-called plutonium economy. This is now clear to all but messianic believers in nuclear energy.

But the vestiges of this technological archaism continue to animate national bureaucracies that deal with the NPT, including that of the US, and the IAEA, as well. Perhaps the most glaring examples of the residual attachment to plutonium is Japan, which accumulated an enormous stockpile of plutonium and China, which, like Japan, plans to open a large reprocessing plant to separate more for two large fast breeder reactors. The US Energy Department is planning an expensive fast reactor to test fuel (the Versatile Test Reactor) for a mythical future commercial generation of such reactors. These steps legitimate similar actions elsewhere and undermine effective nonproliferation controls.

[…]

At a more fundamental level, the United States needs to speak clearly to dispel the myth—one that still grips some NPT member countries—that nuclear power is an essential technology without which a country cannot consider itself as advanced. To get into the details would take us too far afield. But, as an indication of current nuclear prospects, consider the collapse of the highly vaunted “nuclear renaissance” at the beginning of this century that was to lead to construction of dozens of plants in the United States. US nuclear operators filed license applications for 31 large units. They ultimately canceled all but two, and those two are years behind schedule and already double the original cost, which led the original contractor, once proud Westinghouse, to file for bankruptcy.

America’s utility sector has been consistent on this score: It is not going to build any additional large nuclear reactors and doesn’t extract plutonium from used nuclear fuel. This message presented at the 2021 NPT Review Conference would help clear the decks for an honest assessment of what is needed for protection against access to nuclear weapons. If plutonium and reprocessing (its separation technology) are generally permissible, and only barred when worries arise in special cases like Iran, the NPT will ultimately undo itself.

[…]

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「原発事故は町を歴史ごと切り取った」避難先で妻が鬱に、変わり果てた自宅…避難者たちの想いと決意 via Abema Tims (YAHOO!JAPANニュース）

Posted on 2021/03/15 by nfield

しかし、現在も約3万6000人が避難生活を余儀なくされている現実を忘れてはならない。帰りたくても帰れない人、帰らないと決めた人、故郷に帰る人。彼らはこの10年で何を思い、どんな道を歩んできたのだろうか。

「もう二度と戻れないかなって思った」 　浪江町出身の堀川文夫さんは、地域に根付いた塾を営み、子供たちには日ごろから原発の危険性を伝えていた。

[…]

「よそ者だから。仕事もしないで、ぶらぶらしているように周りから見られているような目がなんとなく痛くて。妻が鬱になった」 　故郷を追いやられた悲しみ。何十年も積み上げてきた信頼や人間関係の喪失。堀川さんの心も次第に荒んでいった。 　浪江の自宅に一時帰宅した際、堀川さんは変わり果てた家の様子をカメラに収めていた。 「3月11日のお昼ご飯の跡だ。猫の足跡がいっぱい。動物の入った跡がいっぱいある。壁は亀裂が入っている。これが我が家だ。もう二度と帰れないでしょう」 「自分の人生であり、両親の人生であり、祖父母の人生。私たちの長い歴史があそこにあった。その歴史ごと切り取られたのが原発事故だった。人間の生死という重い問題はあるが、津波だけだったら私たちの歴史が切り取られることはなかった。そういう怒りもあるし、悔しさから何から何まで……」 　避難先で思い出すのは、幸せだった故郷の暮らしと子供たちの笑顔だ。もう二度とあの生活には戻れない。堀川さんは深い失意に苛まれていた。そんなある日一筋の光をもたらすきっかけが訪れた。塾に避難した教え子の一言だった。 「神奈川県に避難した子供の一人がこう言った。『先生、俺にとって震災は悪いことばかりじゃなかったよ。これがあったから会えない人と会えた。これがあったからできないことが経験できた。だから俺にとって悪いことばかりじゃなかった』と。それに私はガーンと頭を叩かれたように思えた。『お前、いつまで引きこもってるんだよ』みたいに。子供たちは4月から新しい生活を始めなきゃならなかったじゃないか。『何やってんだよ』と言われたように思えた。そこから一気に動き出せた」

[…]

堀川さんは「自分がどのような人生を浪江で歩んできたか。新しい地区の人たちにもわかってもらおうと必死でやった」と話す。その思いは次第に地域の信頼へと変わり、そして富士市に新たな塾を設立した。 　避難先で自分の居場所を見つけた堀川さん。しかし、それでも生まれ育った故郷を忘れることはないという。 「避難先に根を下ろせば下ろすほど浪江との縁が薄れていく寂しさはある。故郷ですから」 　堀川さんに「10年経つが今も避難している感覚なのか」と聞くと「そうだ。みんな帰りたいと思っている。帰らない選択をした人も、帰れないと思っている人も帰った人もみんな帰りたいと思っている。それだけは間違いないと思う」と答えた。

[…]

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Why Bill Gates is wrong via Beyond Nuclear International

Posted on 2021/03/15 by nfield

Billionaire’s nuclear ambitions would make climate disaster worse

By Linda Pentz Gunter

In an interview for the Washington PostMagazine during his current book tour, billionaire Bill Gates, whom we are now expected to accept as an authority on climate change, said: “I’ll be happy if TerraPower was a waste of money.” TerraPower is Gates’s nuclear power company pushing so-called “advanced” reactors. His book is called How to Avoid a Climate Disaster.

Well, Bill, I have some good news for you. You can start celebrating! Because, yes, TerraPower is indeed a colossal waste of money. It’s also a waste of precious time. And the idea that nuclear power could “lift billions out of poverty” as the TerraPower website boasts, is on a par with any number of outlandish theories, conspiratorial or otherwise, that are making the all too frequent rounds these days.

[…]

Here are the prices that the eminent financial house Lazard calculated in 2019 for different ways to generate a megawatt-hour of electricity using new nuclear plants and other energy options, as laid out by Amory Lovins in his landmark Forbes article: 

New nuclear power would cost $118–192/MWh (of which $29 is typical operating cost) while utility-scale solar power would cost $32–42/MWh and onshore windpower $28–54/MWh. 

As Lovins has consistently pointed out: “To protect the climate, we must save the most carbon at the least cost and in the least time, counting all three variables—carbon and cost and time.” 

And, “costly options save less carbon per dollar than cheaper options. Slow options save less carbon per year than faster options. Thus even a low- or no-carbon option that is too costly or too slow will reduce and retard achievable climate protection.” 

[…]

Gates wants to save lives conquering malaria. But he’s fine with exposing people to radiation and leaving a legacy of toxic waste with no known solution.

[…]

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原発事故、起こるべくして起きた」東電元エースの告白 via 朝日新聞　（YAHOO!JAPANニュース）

Posted on 2021/03/14 by nfield

かつて東京電力の幹部候補と目されていた50代の男性が、東電福島第一原発事故から約10年を経て、初めて取材に応じた。男性は、待ち合わせのホテルにスーツ姿で現れ、落ち着いた口調で語りはじめた。 【写真】「02年に発覚した原発のトラブル隠しがすべての始まりだったんです」。初めて取材に応じた男性はこう語る。発覚後、新たに社長に就いたのが勝俣恒久だった。

　「今思えば、あの事故は起こるべくして起きた。すべて過去とつながっていて、東電はそこに向けてずっと進んでいたんです」

　東電の司令塔である企画部で順調に出世街道を歩んでいた男性は事故の3カ月後、上司から事故の調査報告書のとりまとめを命じられた。しかし、男性が報告書の原案で原因に触れようとすると、会長の勝俣恒久ら経営陣からは厳しい言葉が飛んできた。

　「事実に立脚していないことは書く必要はない」

　「なんでお前が勝手に決めるんだ」

　男性は「事故は天災で防ぎようがなかったというシナリオを求めている」と感じたという。男性が報告書の原案に書こうとしたのは、過去の不祥事から事故へと至る原因分析だった。

東電では2002年、福島原発や柏崎刈羽原発（新潟県）で、自主点検の記録をごまかし、トラブルを隠していたことが発覚。当時の経営陣が退陣し、後任の社長に就いた勝俣は、原発施設での故障やトラブルを報告させる膨大なマニュアル類を整備した。ところが、現場は報告のための書類づくりに忙殺されていったと男性はいう。「細かい不具合をゼロにすることばかりに集中し、大きな視点で安全を考える余裕がなくなっていました。それで、（原発事故につながった）津波という最も肝心なリスクに向き合えなかった」

　原子力部門に根付いた「安全神話」も大きな原因と思われた。04年ごろ、男性が全社の危機管理を担う部署の担当だったときのことだ。原子力の担当者に、原発事故のリスクを尋ねたが、「そういうリスクは全部排除されていますのであり得ません。安全はすでに確立されています」と答えるばかりだった。

その東電がいま、柏崎刈羽原発の再稼働を急いでいる。数年前に東電を退社した男性が、今回取材に応じたのは、再び同じ過ちを犯してほしくないという思いからだという。「安全重視の文化が本当に東電に浸透したのだろうか。

[…]

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France grossly underestimated radioactive fallout from atom bomb tests, study finds via Science

Posted on 2021/03/14 by yukimiyamotodepaul

By Adrian Cho

From 1966 to 1974, France blew up 41 nuclear weapons in above-ground tests in French Polynesia, the collection of 118 islands and atolls that is part of France. The French government has long contended that the testing was done safely. But a new analysis of hundreds of documents declassified in 2013 suggests the tests exposed 90% of the 125,000 people living in French Polynesia to radioactive fallout—roughly 10 times as many people as the French government has estimated.

[…]

The findings come from a 2-year collaboration, dubbed the Moruroa Files, between Disclose, a French nonprofit that supports investigative journalism; Interprt, a collective of researchers, architects, and spatial designers affiliated with the Norwegian University of Science and Technology who focus on environmental issues; and the Science & Global Security program at Princeton. The findings were presented on 9 March on the project’s website, in a book, and in a technical paper posted to the arXiv preprint server.

The issue of compensation for radiation exposure from the tests has been a thorny one for decades, says Sébastien Philippe, an applied physicist at Princeton, co-author of the book, and lead author on the paper. Under a 2010 law, anyone exposed to fallout in Polynesia or Algeria, where France also conducted nuclear tests, could be compensated if they developed any of 23 cancers associated with exposure to radiation, such as thyroid cancer. Although the law did not acknowledge causing harm, it established a “presumption of causality” between the test and the cancers, explains Sonya Schoenberger, a co-author on the paper who is working on her law degree at Yale University and her doctorate in history at Stanford University.

There was a catch, however. If a standing Committee for the Compensation of Victims of French Nuclear Testing found that a person’s radiation contributed a “negligible” risk of causing their cancer—relative to factors such as smoking—the individual wouldn’t qualify for compensation, Schoenberger says. On those grounds, the committee rejected 97%—1008 of 1039—of claims made between 2010 and 2017.

[…]

But the declassified documents suggest actual exposures were between two and 20 times higher than CEA estimates, Philippe says. Reasons for the discrepancies vary from test to test, he says. For example, CEA acknowledged that the first test, dubbed Aldébaran, exposed residents of the Gambier Islands to relatively high levels of fallout. But actual exposures were likely higher still, Philippe says. Although CEA noted that contaminated rainwater fell on the island, he says, it failed to consider that many residents likely drank the contaminated water, collected in household cisterns, for days.

Most important, the documents suggest a single test in 1974, called Centaure, exposed the entire population of Tahiti—87,500 people at the time—to fallout. French authorities set off a relatively tiny atom bomb with an explosive yield equal to 4 kilotons of TNT, and weather forecasts predicted that winds should carry fallout to the north. Instead, the wind blew to the west, carrying the plume directly over Tahiti. A new simulation based on data in the documents shows how the plume of radiation wafted over the island (see video, below). CEA estimated that people on the island received a dose of about 0.6 mSv.

[…]

Philippe estimates that, assuming a cancer rate of 0.2% per year, roughly 10,000 cancer patients or their families would qualify retroactively and that compensating them would cost about €700 million. Future cancers would cost about €24 million per year, he estimates. However, Hughes says it remains to be seen whether the French government will even acknowledge the analysis. “My fear is that they will simply ignore it,” Hughes says.

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廃炉作業の東電社員が内部被曝…放射性物質付着の手袋で顔に触れる via 讀賣新聞

Posted on 2021/03/11 by nfield

東京電力は１１日、福島第一原子力発電所の廃炉作業をしていた５０歳代の男性社員が内部被曝ひばくしたと発表した。体内に取り込んだ放射性物質は微量で、今後５０年間の被曝線量は最大０・４３ミリ・シーベルト。健康に影響のないレベルだという。

　男性社員は１０日、高濃度汚染水がある建物内で配管を点検していた。装着していた全面マスクのくもりを取ろうとした際、誤って放射性物質が付着した手袋で顔に触れ、鼻から吸い込んだとみられる。

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東京電力社長、3.11取材拒否　福島来県せず、訓示はオンライン via 福島民友

Posted on 2021/03/11 by nfield

　東京電力は１０日、原発事故後に福島第１原発などで行ってきた３月１１日の社長訓示について、今年はオンライン形式とし、終了後の報道陣の取材に応じないと公表した。原発事故後、東電の社長が３月１１日に本県を訪れず、取材にも応じないのは初めて。原発事故から１０年が経過する中、小早川智明社長自らが説明責任を放棄した形となり、東電の当事者としての責任感が薄れていることが浮き彫りになった。https://6b7aca71034c82c69b2d2ce5ac088ec8.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-37/html/container.html?v=1-0-38

　東電は５日、新型コロナウイルス感染拡大防止に向け、今回の社長訓示をオンライン形式で行うと発表。福島民友新聞社などは東電に対し、小早川社長に当日のオンライン取材の対応を申し入れていたが、１０日に「限られた時間の中、オンライン取材に応じれば報道各社への対応に差が出る」と拒否回答があった。

　東電の社長は例年、３月１１日に廃炉作業の最前線となる県内の各現場を訪れてきた。震災が起きた午後２時４６分に黙とうし、事故の教訓や本県復興に向けた思いを社員に訓示した後、報道陣の取材に応じるのが通例だった。東電を巡っては、福島第１原発３号機の地震計を故障したまま放置するなど安全対策を軽視する動きも目立ってきている。

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Fukushima today: “I’m glad that I realized my mistake before I died.” via Bulletin of Atomic Scientists

Posted on 2021/03/10 by nfield

By Thomas A. Bass | March 10, 2021

[…]

But is it safe to promote Japan’s so-called “recovery” by sending athletes into a nuclear exclusion zone? The area has been tidied up and dotted with LED monitors showing the latest cesium releases from F1, comparable to the devices that measure airborne radiation levels found in other parts of the world. But these airborne releases are only part of the story—and not the most worrisome part. In 2013, scientists discovered that Fukushima’s exploding reactors had showered Japan with microparticles, or little glassy beads, of radioactive cesium and uranium. Hot spots from these microparticles can be found in vacuum cleaner bags and automobile air filters as far away as Tokyo. Fukushima prefecture is full of radioactive hot spots, and these hot spots keep moving as microparticles are washed down from the forested mountains that make up 70 percent of the prefecture, researchers said in Nature Scientific Reports.

In 2019, a survey conducted for Greenpeace found hot spots in the J-Village parking lot, where children participating in a youth soccer match were eating their lunch. Greenpeace measured radiation levels at over 71 microSieverts per hour (one microSievert is one-millionth of a Sievert, or one-thousandth of a milliSievert)—1,775 times higher than the normal reading in this area before the Fukushima disaster of about 0.04 microSieverts per hour. The elevated reading, which translates to roughly about 0.62 Sieverts over the course of a year, meant that anyone breathing dust from the J-Village playing fields could be ingesting radioactive particles—little death stars lighting the way to cancer and genetic mutation. Since then, researchers have found radioactive hot spots at the Azuma baseball stadium in Fukushima City and all along the route to be run by the Olympic torch bearers.

[…]

If Japan covered up the risks involved in building 54 nuclear reactors on its geologically unstable shores, it is now covering up the consequences. A government-sponsored study of radiation exposure in Fukushima prefecture undercounted people’s exposure by two-thirds. Australian physician Tilman Ruff, co-founder of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (which won the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize), wrote me to say that doctors have left the area because the government refuses to reimburse them when they list radiation sickness as the cause for nose bleeds, spontaneous abortions, and other ailments resulting from ionizing radiation. (The only acceptable diagnoses are so-called “radiophobia,” nervousness, and stress.) The spike in thyroid cancer among children in Fukushima is dismissed as a survey error, produced by examining too many children.

The government has mounted no epidemiological study in Fukushima. It has established no baseline for comparing public health before and after the disaster. Instead, it has greenlighted the use of radioactive ash and soil from Fukushima in construction projects throughout the country, the Japan Times reported.

[…]

“Japan has clamped down on scientific efforts to study the nuclear catastrophe,” said Alex Rosen, a pediatrician who co-chairs the German affiliate of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War. “There is hardly any literature, any publicized research, on the health effects on humans, and those that are published come from a small group of researchers at Fukushima Medical University, which are centered around the scientist Shunichi Yamashita, who in Japan is called ‘Mr. 100 milliSieverts.’ ” (Yamashita was the spokesman for the Japanese government in the early months of the catastrophe and led the Fukushima health survey for two years, before being forced to resign in 2013. Contradicting his earlier research and instructions to his own staff, Yamashita told the public that 100 milliSieverts of radiation was harmless. He recommended against administering iodine pills to prevent thyroid cancer, and told people that their best protection against radiation poisoning was literally to smile and be happy.)

[…]

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10 years since the Fukushima nuclear disaster via Japanese against nuclear UK

Posted on 2021/03/10 by nfield
Posted in *English, *日本語, Deutsch, Español, Français, Português, 中文, 한국어 | Tagged , | Comments Off on 10 years since the Fukushima nuclear disaster via Japanese against nuclear UK