The weekend read: Looking at the energy transition’s bigger picture via pv magazine

Posted on 2021/07/11 by nfield

JULY 10, 2021 MARK HUTCHINS

From pv magazine 07/2021

pv magazine: It’s been more than 10 years since you first published work on a 100% renewables system – what has changed since then?

Mark Jacobson, director, atmosphere/energy program, Stanford University: The first article I published was back in 2009 in Scientific American. At the time utilities didn’t think much more than 20% renewables on the grid was possible, and when we proposed to go to 100%, people laughed at us.

Since then, everything has changed. There is a lot more discussion as to how we can get to 100% renewables, and whether the costs will go up. In the U.S. we now have around 24% renewable electricity. So, we are about 8% to 9% of the way there in terms of how far we need to go to get to 100% renewables for all energy, not just electricity, in the country.

There has been this huge growth of wind and solar, and now beginning with battery storage and electric vehicles as well. In the building sector people are starting to talk about more laws being passed to ensure new buildings are energy efficient and all electric. Heavy industries and air and ship transport are also starting to electrify. There is a lot of good news, but we still need very aggressive policies to be put in place to ensure that rapid transition – at least 80% by 2030, and 100% by 2050.

I think that the biggest obstacles right now are competing interests, all of these technologies being proposed that are actually much less helpful than renewables – so carbon capture, new nuclear power, bio energy, direct air capture, geoengineering. All of these things are basically opportunity costs and distractions from real solutions.

You’ve talked about a need for increased efficiency and energy demand reduction in a 100% wind water and sunlight scenario. How do these fit with the model?

Actually just by transitioning to 100% electricity, and providing that electricity with clean renewable energy, we would reduce global power demand by around 57%. Using heat pumps instead of gas heaters, for example, reduces your energy demand for heat by 75%. Same thing with electric vehicles – in a gasoline vehicle, 20% of the energy is used to move the car, and the rest is waste heat. Whereas in an electric vehicle 80% to 85% is used to move the car.

Additionally, 12% of energy worldwide is used for the mining, transport and refining of fossil fuels and uranium – and we eliminate all of that. Electrifying industry has a smaller benefit but about a 3% to 4% reduction is possible. And then there is another 6% to 7% in energy efficiency measures beyond ‘business as usual’. That all adds up to around a 57% reduction in energy requirements just by going to 100% clean renewable energy. And if you’re using 57% less energy, the cost per unit energy being the same, you’re paying 57% less per year. We calculate that worldwide the total annual cost that people pay will be about 60% lower. So about 57% less energy use and another 10% reduction in cost per unit energy.

So the cost per unit would fall by around 10%?

That’s a conservative estimate, because wind and solar right now are half the cost of natural gas. But OK, you need backup and you have more transmission and distribution – when you account for everything, it’s a minimum 10% lower cost of energy, but you are using 57% less energy. It’s a huge reduction in cost.

How does this backup look in your models? Is it all storage?

Demand response is also a very big component, and you have transmission interconnection over large areas. On one extreme you could have 100% storage and minimal interconnection, on the other you could just interconnect the world and have no storage, because you can always get renewable power from somewhere in the world. In reality you are going to have somewhere in between, and I think storage is winning because it is just getting harder to put up new transmission lines.

[…]

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Nuclear Energy Will Not Be the Solution to Climate Change via Foreign Affairs

Posted on 2021/07/08 by nfield

There Is Not Enough Time for Nuclear Innovation to Save the Planet

By Allison Macfarlane

he world is almost out of time with respect to decarbonizing the energy sector. Doing so, experts agree, is essential to forestalling some of the most alarming consequences of climate change, including rising sea levels, droughts, fires, extreme weather events, ocean acidification, and the like. These threats have helped generate fresh interest in the potential for nuclear power—and, more specifically, innovative nuclear reactor designs—to allow people to rely less on carbon-spewing electricity sources such as coal, natural gas, and oil. In recent years, advanced nuclear designs have been the focus of intensive interest and support from both private investors such as Bill Gates—who founded TerraPower, a nuclear reactor design company, in 2006—and national governments, including that of the United States.

Advocates hope that this renewed focus on nuclear energy will yield technological progress and lower costs. But when it comes to averting the imminent effects of climate change, even the cutting edge of nuclear technology will prove to be too little, too late. Put simply, given the economic trends in existing plants and those under construction, nuclear power cannot positively impact climate change in the next ten years or more. Given the long lead times to develop engineered, full-scale prototypes of new advanced designs and the time required to build a manufacturing base and a customer base to make nuclear power more economically competitive, it is unlikely that nuclear power will begin to significantly reduce our carbon energy footprint even in 20 years—in the United States and globally. No country has developed this technology to a point where it can and will be widely and successfully deployed.

[…]

An October 2020 analysis by Lazard showed that in the United States, capital costs for nuclear power are higher than for almost any other energy-generating technology. There are multiple efforts underway to make nuclear reactors more efficient and, ultimately, more competitive with other forms of energy production that can cut down on carbon emissions. Each of these designs faces its own set of logistical and regulatory hurdles, however.

[…]

NO SILVER BULLET

For all these reasons, nuclear energy cannot be a near- or perhaps even medium-term silver bullet for climate change. Given how many economic, technical, and logistical hurdles stand in the way of building safer, more efficient, and cost-competitive reactors, nuclear energy will not be able to replace other forms of power generation quickly enough to achieve the levels of emission reduction necessary to prevent the worst effects of climate change.

Innovations in reactor designs and nuclear fuels are still worthy of significant research and government support. Despite its limitations, nuclear power still has some potential to reduce carbon emissions—and that is a good thing. But rather than placing unfounded faith in the ability of nuclear power to save the planet, we need to focus on the real threat: the changing climate. And we need strong government support of noncarbon-emitting energy technologies that are ready to be deployed today, not ten or 20 years from now, because we have run out of time. We cannot wait a minute longer.

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In Memoriam: To Father Stan, with love and in solidarity via DiaNuke.org

Posted on 2021/07/06 by nfield

DiaNuke expresses profound grief on the passing away of Father Stan Swamy, an eminent human rights activist and a conscientious voice that spoke truth to power. He was a long-time ally of grassroots struggles especially of adivasi communities against forcible land acquisition, displacement, and the abject of lack of public consultation as the Indian state lays to waste verdant ecologies and bulldozes democratic dissent to serve the neoliberal agenda.

We remember him with deep affection for his unrelenting activism against uranium mining on adivasi/indigenous lands, and for his enthusiastic and consistent support for our on-ground and online campaigns against nuclearization in South Asia, and the brazen push for nuclear power.

There could not have been a crueler irony than for a person of immense character, compassion, humility, and unflinching courage to have been labeled an ‘enemy’ of the Indian state and to have died alone in a hospital a day before his plea for bail was to come up for hearing in the Bombay High Court. We are horrified at the callousness displayed by India’s government/investigative agencies and judicial processes, that were so threatened by an 84-year-old activist, as to have denied him basic human dignity and medical care.

He will continue to be deeply loved by his comrades, family, and India’s invisibilized communities, collateral damage in India’s ‘progress’ story. We will continue to live by the ideals professed by Father Stan Swamy and carry forward his remarkable legacy.

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Uproar Over Japan’s Decision to Disperse Radioactive Fukushima Waste Water via Counterpunch

Posted on 2021/07/05 by nfield

By John LaForge

Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga’s Cabinet on April 13 “gave permission” to Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) to release over 1.25 million metric tons (1.38 million US tons) of Fukushima’s radioactive wastewater into the Pacific Ocean.

Harsh rejection of the decision was immediate and widespread, coming from Russia, China, North and South Korea, the Philippines, New Zealand, Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala and several Pacific Island nations, as well as the fishing industry, marine scientists, and environmentalists. “It will be strongly resisted over the coming months,” said Jennifer Morgan, executive director of Greenpeace International.

[…]

The Biden Administration and the International Atomic Energy Agency both announced support for the decision, but criticism came from around the world, with South Korea and China considering lawsuits. South Korean President Moon Jae-in told officials look into petitioning the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea or filing an injunction there over Japan’s decision, Reuters and Al Jazeera reported.[1] According to a statement by the Chinese Foreign Ministry, Beijing also considers Japan’s plan to be a “possible violation of international law,” the French news service AFP reported.[2]

Part of the reason for the backlash is that 70 percent of the wastewater now stored in over 1,000 giant tanks is still contaminated with dozens of highly radioactive materials.[3] Tepco’s Advanced Liquid Processing System (ALPS) — a novel filter system that the company claimed would remove 62 isotopes from the water — has not worked. The company says it will re-filter the waste before it starts pouring it into the Pacific.

“This water is contaminated with such radionuclides as cesium-137, carbon-14, tritium (some of which will form the more dangerous ‘organically bound tritium’), strontium-90, cobalt-60, iodine-129, plutonium-239, and more than 50 other hazardous radionuclides,” reported Rick Steiner, a marine biologist in Anchorage and former University of Alaska professor of marine conservation, in the Anchorage Daily News April 25.[4]

[…]

apan’s Nuclear Regulatory Agency said that radioactivity in the released wastewater will be “within international limits,” and Deputy Prime Minister Taro Aso went so far as to say the waste would be “safe to drink.” However, as Prof. Steiner reported, “As carbon-14 has a half-life of 5,730 years, and is known to bio-accumulate in marine ecosystems and cause cellular and genetic impairment, this is a very serious concern. Fukushima carbon-14 will be added to the elevated radioactive carbon-14 load in the oceans from nuclear weapons tests last century — “bomb carbon” — now found in organisms even in the deepest part of the ocean, the Marianas Trench.”

Japan’s dumping decision means that alternatives recommended by experts were rejected in favor of the cheapest choice. Other options include expansion and long-term tank storage to allow the waste’s radioactivity to decrease, replacing the ALPS filter with a system that removes tritium and all the rest, or evaporation of the wastewater.

[…]

Abandoning the fishing community

Japan’s decision appears to be a tacit abandonment of the county’s fishing industry in the NE, as it came only 5 days after the World Trade Organization upheld South Korea’s 2013 ban on seafood from eight Japanese prefectures.[6] At least 54 countries or regions banned food imports from Japan after Fukushima’s March 2011 triple reactor meltdowns, and 23 still had the restrictions in place in March 2021.

[…]

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Utterly destroyed via Beyond Nuclear International

Posted on 2021/07/05 by nfield

That’s the outlook for a spectacular stretch of coastline should new reactors be built there

From Blackwater Against New Nuclear Group

“The Essex coastline is remarkable for its length, at 350 miles the longest of any county in England, its more than thirty islands, and its estuaries, like the Blackwater, extending the sea miles inland,” writes Andy Blowers. “And yet, its very character is threatened by the proposed new reactor project at Bradwell B.” 

The Bradwell B nuclear power station would be a joint two-reactor project of the French government energy company, EDF, and China General Nuclear Power Group (CGN). The proposed design is the Chinese HPR1000. The project has not yet received its Development Consent Order and is vigorously opposed by the local community and by environmentalists and scientists.

“What is to be lost, should Bradwell B come to pass?” Blowers asks. “First and foremost will be the sense of openness and space, for this coast is a place where land, sea and sky meet; the vast East Anglian sky with endlessly changing weather, the daily theatre of blue and grey sky, scudding clouds, tranquil and stormy, sometimes a golden sunrise or a glorious glowing sunset.

“Beneath is the restless sea, the ebb and flow of the tide revealing for a while the mud and gravel of the foreshore, draining and refilling the creeks, eroding and replenishing the mudflats and saltmarshes. This vast panorama, the essence of the Essex coastal scene, would be utterly destroyed by a massive nuclear complex, with cooling towers pluming to the sky, discharges polluting the waters and the air and earthworks disrupting the land.”

The threat at Bradwell is similar to that for the proposed Sizewell C new nuclear plant site in neighboring Suffolk, also a joint project of EDF and CGN. (The Sizewell reactors will be French EPRs.) Both projects are on fragile, low-lying coastal sites vulnerable to inundation and will be increasingly exposed to the impacts of climate change in the form of sea level rise, storm surges and coastal processes. And both are situated in areas of considerable environmental importance and sensitivity that would be severely compromised by nuclear development.

That is why Blowers, an international expert on radioactive waste management and sustainable development, has written to the Sizewell C Examining Authority declaring that both Bradwell B and Sizewell C should be abandoned as a whole now to avoid falling victim to the catastrophic impacts of climate change later.

[…]

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EDF launches the “EPR2” via Beyond Nuclear International

Posted on 2021/07/05 by nfield

By Stéphane Lhomme

The politics of “fait accompli” will ensure a new industrial and financial disaster

Editor’s note: Despite the latest safety failures at the Taishan EPR in China; the endless delays and cost over-runs at the EPR projects in France and Finland; the technical fiascos and do-overs at the EPR construction sites in France, Finland and the UK; and the ongoing reckless plans for 6 EPRs in India, the French nuclear sector has far from abandoned its hubris. Instead, incredibly, and as Stéphane Lhomme tells us in a recent new blog on the topic, here translated into English, EDF has announced plans to begin construction of the “EPR2”. What could possibly go wrong?

Despite the fact that it has proven incapable of properly carrying out the construction of the EPR reactor at the never-ending Flamanville site underway since 2008, EDF leadership has nevertheless decided — according to the media outlet, Contexte — to allocate hundreds of millions of Euros to launch a construction program for new reactors, called “EPR2”.

Despite being fiercely pro-nuclear, President Macron has declared on several occasions that the EPR at Flamanville would need to be operational before any decision to build other reactors could be made.

However, it’s very likely that Mr. Macron is perfectly well aware of — and complicit in — this decision by EDF management to move forward with a new project.

Just as it has often done in the past, in its contempt for democracy and the interests of the French public, the leadership of EDF intends to use the politics of fait accompli: it proposes to spend hundreds of billions to start one or several “EPR2” reactor construction projects in order to then proclaim that the ship has sailed so the program cannot be stopped…. under threat of wasting hundreds of billions.

But it’s precisely by building nuclear reactors that EDF is already wasting astronomic sums, just as Areva did before that, going bankrupt due to the disastrous EPR construction project in Finland (which began in 2005, was supposed to come on line in 2009….but is still not complete)!

EDF claimed to have EPR construction under control despite Areva’s setbacks in Finland, but the construction at Flamanville is also a total catastrophe. So how can we possibly believe that, miraculously, EDF would be capable of building new EPR reactors, and moreover modified ones (hence the concept “EPR2”)?

For sure, from the anti-nuclear point of view, it is reassuring to be able to count on the incompetence and manifest inability of EDF to build nuclear reactors. But there is no justification for wasting incredible sums of money that are so needed for energy efficiency and renewable energy development.

On the contrary, EDF is guaranteeing failure with these delusional nuclear projects, and, as is the case for Areva (renamed Orano), it is the public who will pay for the steep losses. If this “EPR2” program is not stopped as quickly as possible, it will end in a new industrial and financial disaster.

[…]

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Nuclear Justice for the Marshall Islands via The Diplomat

Posted on 2021/07/01 by nfield

By Jon Letman

Just three months after the atomic ruins of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had been burned into Japan’s landscape, U.S. military and political leaders began planning a series of atomic weapons tests in order to study the effects of the bomb on naval vessels. With World War II over and a new era of Pacific control ahead, the United States selected Bikini and Enewetak Atolls in the northern Marshall Islands, part of what it called the Pacific Proving Grounds, as the site of 67 nuclear weapons tests. These tests played a key role in setting the stage for global politics and power struggles for the first 75 years of the atomic age.

On July 1, 1946, Joint Task Force One launched Operation Crossroads “Test A” (Able) when, at exactly 34 seconds past 9 a.m., a B-29 Superfortress dropped a 23-kiloton plutonium bomb (nearly identical to the “Fat Man” bomb that destroyed Nagasaki) over Bikini Atoll. The bomb exploded 520 feet above sea level, where 242 naval vessels floated in the eastern lagoon as targets. Operation Crossroads continued on July 25 with “Test B” (Baker), the world’s first underwater nuclear detonation. A third test, Charlie, was cancelled due to radiation concerns. As described in the military’s official report, whether detonated in the air or under water, the atomic bomb’s end result would be “death and destruction on an enormous scale.”

Subsequent test names included Nutmeg, Walnut, Maple, and Rose. More than a dozen had American Indian tribal names – Apache, Navajo, and Dakota – while others were prosaically called Mike, George, or simply Dog. Early tests were conducted sporadically – three in 1948, four in 1951, two in 1952, six in 1954 – but in the final two years, the U.S. sharply accelerated the pace. Between May 1956 and August 1958, the U.S. detonated 50 nuclear and thermonuclear bombs, often just a few days apart. On seven occasions, tests were carried out on consecutive days and seven times atomic bombs were detonated twice in a single day.

The tests were of greatest consequence to the people whose homeland was selected for the detonations, which proved to be catastrophic to the health, environment, and well-being of the Marshallese. The 67 tests had a total yield of 108 megatons – the equivalent of 1.6 Hiroshima-sized bombs being detonated every day for a dozen years. Testing irrevocably disrupted life in the Marshall Islands, introducing generations of dislocation, disease, and premature death. Traditional practices were punctured, whole islands were vaporized, and a giant poison-filled concrete dome was left at the edge of a plutonium-spiked lagoon.

Beginning with 167 Bikini Islanders who were told that the abandonment of their islands was “for the good of mankind and to end all wars,” followed by residents of neighboring atolls, entire communities were forced to leave their ancestral homes only to be returned later, then relocated again and again, causing profound impacts that continue today.

[…]

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Plutonium Pit Production Lawsuit: Jay Coughlin, Marylia Kelley, Tom Clements – NH #523 via Nuclear Hotseat

Posted on 2021/07/01 by nfield

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This Week’s SPECIAL Feature:

It’s not often that I prep a show’s interviews and then throw them out on Tuesday morning because something more important has happened — but that’s the case this week.  On Monday, June 28, a coalition of community and public interest groups filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) regarding plans to more than quadruple the production of plutonium pits – the detonating core of nuclear weapons – and split production between the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in New Mexico and the Savannah River Site (SRS) in South Carolina. 

Today, June 29, representatives of this lawsuit held a press conference on a lawsuit filed against the Biden administration over nuclear bomb core (pit) production plans.  Nuclear Hotseat attended, asked questions, and was so impressed with the clarity of the information, we asked for permission to carry excerpts on this week’s program. 

The speakers on this show include:

  • Jay Coughlin, Executive Director of Nuclear Watch New Mexico, who explains what plutonium pits are and what’s wrong with the plan to create more of them.
  • Tom Clements is director of Savannah River Site (SRS) Watch in Columbia, South Carolina. He speaks about the specific problems and inappropriateness of selecting SRS as a site to produce plutonium pits.  
  • Queen Quet, the Chieftess and head of state for the Gullah/Geeche Nation and founder of the Gullah/Geeche Sea Island Coalition.  Her people live in proximity to SRS and she speaks on the human toll of ramping up nuclear pit production.
  • Marylia Kelley of Tri-Valley CARES in Livermore, California, connected the dots as to how a new, untested change in nuclear weaponry developed at the Livermore Labs is being used to push through these new plutonium pits – and why they are not needed.
  • LINK to Full Press Conference:  https://www.facebook.com/watch/live/?v=864853474103335&ref=watch_permalink
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Collapsed Florida Condo Sends a Giant Nuke Warning via Reader Supported News

Posted on 2021/06/29 by nfield

By Harvey Wasserman

[…]

The owners of America’s 93 licensed reactors have been warned for decades that they could both implode and explode. They have also done nothing.

More than 150 people may have died in this avoidable Florida disaster. The death toll from the next avoidable reactor disaster could stretch into the millions, with property damage in the trillions, a blow from which our economy and ecosystems might never recover.

South Florida authorities have now ordered inspections of large buildings over forty years old. Nearly all US reactors – including four on the ocean in South Florida – are also now around forty years old.

They all must be immediately shut for rigorous inspection. To wait is to invite a radioactive version of what just happened to that condo.

The argument is not about nuclear power. It’s about basic sanity.

The industry is currently pushing “new” designs based on fusion, thorium, breeder technologies, molten salt, small modular, and more. None have been proven safe or effective in fighting climate chaos. Nor can they compete with renewables. None have a reasonable prospect of coming online before being completely left in the radioactive dust by accelerating advances in wind, solar, batteries, and LED efficiency.

All are certain to consume huge quantities of public money, pouring into private pockets (like those of Bill Gates) before failing utterly.

But they pale in importance alongside the 93 US reactors (there are some 430 worldwide) now plummeting toward certain catastrophe.

None of these reactors can get private liability insurance against an apocalyptic disaster. Most were designed in the pre-digital 1950s and ‘60s. Many were built with inferior materials and understanding.

Critical welds at California’s Diablo Canyon, for example, contain metal components long since banned. But Unit One continues to operate.

Critical concrete at New Hampshire’s Seabrook and Ohio’s Davis-Besse is crumbling. Fort Calhoun in Nebraska was flooded. Intake pipes at South Texas froze. Reactors in Ohio and Virginia have been damaged by earthquakes. Diablo is surrounded by earthquake faults set to deliver seismic shocks which a Nuclear Regulatory Commission resident inspector has said it can’t withstand. The owners of San Onofre want to bury their high-level wastes ONE HUNDRED FEET from the tide line. Meaningful evacuation planning is nonexistent at sites where nearby population centers have exploded since the original siting approval.

All these old reactors contribute to climate chaos with emissions of heat, radiation, and carbon. They suck up billions of gallons of precious water, then dump it or evaporate it with chemical, radioactive, and thermal pollution. In every case, our planet would benefit from their shutdown.

Virtually all US reactors are almost certainly embrittled, meaning emergency cooling water poured into the core to quell a meltdown would shatter critical components, resulting in apocalyptic hydrogen and possibly fission explosions, as at Chernobyl and Fukushima.

To put it most simply: no embrittled reactor has a workable set of brakes. Yet states like California, and the NRC itself, refuse to conduct relatively cheap and simple open inspections.

Thus embrittlement, pipe cracking, component degradation, technical obsolescence, an aging workforce, rampant incompetence, and worse define the reality of virtually every operating atomic reactor, here and around the planet.

[…]

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福島第一原発の放射性廃棄物　高まる漏えいリスク　保管設備の劣化進む　via 東京新聞

Posted on 2021/06/28 by nfield

事故から１０年が過ぎた福島第一原発（福島県双葉町、大熊町）で、放射性廃棄物を保管する設備の劣化が進み、東京電力は漏えいリスクに直面している。膨大な量と高い放射線量が対応を難しくさせており、ゴールの見えない廃炉工程では核燃料取り出し以外にも高いハードルがいくつもある。（小野沢健太）

◆汚泥容器３１基が寿命超え

　「速やかに移し替えるべきだ」。６月７日、福島第一の事故収束作業を議論する原子力規制委員会の検討会で、伴信彦委員が東電に迫った。汚染水の浄化処理で発生する廃棄物を保管する容器３１基が既に寿命を超えていると、規制委の試算を突き付けた。　事故で溶け落ちた核燃料（デブリ）が残る原子炉建屋に雨や地下水が流れ込んで発生する汚染水は、多核種除去設備（ＡＬＰＳ）で大半の放射性物質を除去する。　その際に出る高濃度の放射性物質を含む汚泥を、ステンレスで補強したＨＩＣというポリエチレン製容器（直径１・５メートル、高さ１・８メートル、厚さ約１センチ）に入れて保管している。その数は約３３００基に上る。　東電は、容器底から２０センチ上の汚泥の密度から放射線量を試算し、容器が寿命を迎えるのは２０２５年以降と見込んでいた。だが、規制委は底にたまった汚泥は密度が濃く、放射線量も高いため劣化は速く進み、今後２年間でさらに５６基が寿命を迎えると試算した。東電は対応見直しを迫られ、８月から急ピッチで新しい容器へ移し替える。

◆野ざらしコンテナ　中身は不明

　がれきや使用済み防護服などの放射性廃棄物を入れた金属製コンテナも劣化が進む。約８万５０００基のコンテナが野ざらしになっており、３月には１基の底部が腐食で穴が開いていたことが判明。高線量のゲル状の中身が漏れ、放射性物質が海へ流れ出ていた。　コンテナのうち約４０００基は、具体的な中身が分かっていない。東電は事故当初、廃棄物の管理に手が回らず、１７年１１月までは中身の記録方法も不十分だった。今年７～１０月にコンテナを開けて確認するが、線量が高い廃棄物が多く、作業員の被ばくが避けられない。　東電は屋外保管する廃棄物を焼却したり破砕したりして量を減らし、２８年度には建物内に移す計画。しかし、肝心の焼却設備は試運転で不具合が起き、今年３月の稼働開始を１年先送りに。ごみの処分でさえ計画通りには進んでいない。

◆地震リスクも深刻

　２月から続く地震もリスクを高めている。事故当初に汚染水を保管するために急造したボルト締め型タンク６基で、５月までに水漏れが相次いだ。地震では、タンク外周に取り付けられた足場やふたが落下した。　鋼板をボルトでつなぎ合わせたタンクは耐久性に問題があり、ほとんどは溶接型タンクに置き換えられた。　ボルト締め型タンク約３０基には５、６号機の建屋地下にたまる放射能濃度が低い水１・６万トンを保管し、浄化処理して敷地内に散水している。　このタンクのつなぎ目の止水材は耐用年数が５年ほどとされるが、いずれも建設から１０年近くたっている。作業員らは１日４回水漏れがないか確認している。

[…]

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