日本原子力研究開発機構（ＪＡＥＡ）は東京電力福島第一原発事故後に県内の森林に沈着した放射性セシウムについて、河川水系や森林地下深部に移る傾向が極めて少なく、表層部に長期間とどまる可能性が高いとする研究結果をまとめた。このため、生態系への影響を長期的に調査し、生活圏に土壌が流出しないよう対策を取るべきとした。
調査の結果、森林から河川水系への放射性セシウム流入量は年間で総沈着量の０．１％程度にとどまっていた。一方、森林に沈着した放射性セシウムは約９０％が地表から１０センチ以内にあったという。
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もっと読む。
東京電力福島第１原発の汚染水対策として期待されていた「凍土遮水壁」が運用開始から３カ月経過しても効果が見えない。相変わらず汚染水が増え続けていることから、東電は漏洩リスクのある「フランジ型タンク」を来年度以降も使用継続する見通しを原子力規制委員会に示した。フランジ型では汚染水が漏れるトラブルがたびたび生じており、長期使用への懸念が高まっている。（原子力取材班）
「懸念が現実に…」漏れるため息
凍土壁は１～４号機の建屋を取り囲むように地中に凍結管を埋め込み、氷の壁を作って地下水の流れを遮断する仕組み。政府と東電が汚染水対策の「抜本策」と位置づけて国費約３４５億円を投じ、今年２月に建設工事が完了した。東電は当初、凍土壁が完成すれば汚染水の発生量は“劇的”に減少すると見込んでいた。ところが、先月２７日に東電が規制委との非公開の面談で提示した資料によると、汚染水の発生量は現在、１日４００トン程度で、３月末に凍土壁の運用を始める前からほとんど変わっていない。
凍土壁の凍結範囲は現在、海側（東側）が１００％、山側（西側）が９５％でまだ完了していないが、東電はこのまま効果が出ず、汚染水が増え続けることも仮定して、来年４月以降もフランジ型で汚染水を保管する試算を規制委に示した。
かねて、凍土壁の効果に疑問を呈してきた規制委側は「指摘していたことが、残念ながらその通りになりつつある」とため息を漏らす。
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東電は当初、今年度内に全てのフランジ型を解体し、継ぎ目がなく漏れにくい「溶接型」のタンクに置き換える計画だった。そもそも、フランジ型タンクの耐用年数は「５年が目安」（東電）だからだ。ところが、増え続ける汚染水に溶接型の建設が間に合わず、現在、ストロンチウムのみを処理した濃度の高い汚染水をフランジ型タンクに移送している。
一方で溶接型タンクの一部では、放射性物質の濃度の低い処理済み水を保管している状況もあり、規制委の更田豊志委員長代理は、「ウサギを鉄格子に入れているのに、トラを木枠に入れていますという世界だ」と、その矛盾を指摘している。
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もう限界…敷地埋め尽くすタンク
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政府と東電は、トリチウムを除去する方法などさまざまな選択肢がある中で、汚染水処理装置でも取り切れないトリチウムを含んだ水（約６０万トン）の海洋放出も検討している。今秋にも何らかの方針を示すとみられるが、実際の放出には事前の調査や必要な設備の建設に１年半～２年程度かかるとみられ、地元との協議や規制委による審査などでさらに長期化する可能性もある。問題は、そこまで持ちこたえられるかどうかだ。東電は「タンクの容量は当面確保されており、今後、凍土壁の効果もある程度期待できると信じている」としているが、そんな悠長なことを言っていて大丈夫なのだろうか。
巨額の費用を投じた「氷の壁」の現実を、そろそろ直視しなくてはならない時期にきているのではないだろうか。
もっと読む。
Ars speaks to artists about their unique approaches to cameras and nuclear energy.
PORTLAND, Ore.—In the cool, hushed atmosphere of Portland’s Newspace Center for Photography, a Geiger counter clicks steadily as I orient myself to the room. White walls, wood floors, and the faint, clean smell of an elementary school auditorium. I was here to see the “Reactive Matters” exhibit, a small collection of photography by three artists whose works document nuclear energy, nuclear weapons, and the disasters that have peppered our history of experimenting with radioactive material.
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Digging deep
Chicago-based artist Jeremy Bolen told Ars over the phone that he became interested in nuclear energy after he visited “Site A” in the Red Gate Woods on the former grounds of the Argonne National Laboratory. (Argonne still exists in Illinois, but the lab was moved in 1947.) Site A became the first nuclear waste dumping ground in the US after scientists built an early nuclear reactor there in 1943.
“I began trying to make images of the site because it’s a hidden site, it’s not a tourist destination, but it might be one of the more important places in history,” Bolen told Ars, adding that he grew up in a neighborhood close to Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory outside of Chicago and has had an enduring interest in high-energy particle physics.
Bolen’s featured works at Newspace include a series named after Vieques, an island belonging to Puerto Rico that was used for weapons testing by the United States between when the US bought about two-thirds of the island in 1941 and when the military left the island in 2003.
According to Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism, “More than 80 million pounds of chemical weapons, bombs and ammunition were dropped on the eastern portion of the island for a good part of the 20th century. Its soil still harbors bullets filled with radioactive depleted uranium and unexploded bombs.” In 2010, about 7,000 residents of the island jointly sued the US Navy claiming that military operations on the island were the cause of Vieques’ higher-than-average rate of cancer, along with a slew of other long-term medical issues. A Puerto Rican Federal District Court dismissed the lawsuit, and the US First Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that dismissal in 2012 due to the Navy’s right to sovereign immunity.
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“A lot of my time is spent researching,” Bolen said. His photos at Newspace touch on some of the controversies around nuclear energy and atomic warfare, so I had to ask what message he was hoping to convey with the work featured in Portland. “I try to remain fairly objective about the whole thing,” Bolen explained. “I see myself really as documentary photographer. I’m more interested in finding a way to document these sites.”
Still, he added, “I care deeply about a lot of these issues. I’m very interested in the idea of the anthropocene [the epoch defined by geologists to articulate human impact on our world] and I think that it’s important to understand that there are things beyond our senses, things that we can’t see.”
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Old stomping grounds
Newspace also featured a collection by Shimpei Takeda, a Brooklyn artist who was born in Fukushima and grew up vacationing there after his family moved to Tokyo. After the 2011 Fukushima disaster, he returned to the area of the nuclear disaster to create his “Trace” series, using a cameraless photography process to show how the region was affected by radioactive contamination.
“He collected soil from various locations in Fukushima representative of life and death, such as temples, shrines, war sites, and his own birthplace,” Newspace’s informational panel noted. “He then exposed photo-sensitive paper to radiation emitted from contaminated particles in the soil. The subsequent photograms appear as highly abstract black and white constellations, yet their very existence uncovers one of the worst man-made disasters of our times.”
Read more at Fukushima, Vieques, Rocky Flats: Radioactive photos tell nuclear stories
東京電力福島第１原発事故で関西に避難した被災者や支援団体メンバーらが９日、大阪市内で避難の現状を報告する集会を開き、参加者約２００人に支援を呼び掛けた。
支援者らは、自主避難者への住宅支援の打ち切りや避難者の孤立化などの問題点を指摘。「避難の協同センター」事務局長の瀬戸大作さんは「金銭的な貧困だけではなく、つながりの問題も抱えている」と話した。
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Radioactive fuel cells on a dozen disused nuclear submarines languishing in Plymouth are to be removed and taken to a site in the North of England for storage and eventual disposal.
The Ministry of Defence yesterday revealed the fate of the boats which are currently stationed at Devonport but said no date has yet been fixed for the process to begin
Defence Minister Philip Dunne said the highly toxic part of the decommissioned submarines would be removed at a date to be set.
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There have been a number of leaks of nuclear waste associated with the submarines based in Devonport.
- *March 25, 2009: radioactive water escaped from HMS Turbulent while the reactor’s discharge system was being flushed.
- *November 2008: 280 litres of water likely to have been contaminated with the radioactive isotope tritium, poured from a burst hose as it was being pumped from the submarine.
- *October 2005: 10 litres of water leaked out as the main reactor circuit of HMS Victorious as it was being cleaned to reduce radiation.
- *November 2002: Around ten litres of radioactive coolant leaked from HMS Vanguard.
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Last year campaigners raised safety fears after the MoD said it was spending £16million to store old nuclear submarines.
A total of 19 are currently in mothballs awaiting dismantling, with the majority in Plymouth.
The boats, which have been taken out of service, have been kept in Plymouth since 1994.
Devonport is currently home to 12 submarines – eight of which are still carrying their fuel load.
Another eight submarines are to leave service over the next 15 to 20 years.
Read more at Nuclear waste from scrapped Plymouth subs to be sent up country
東京電力は、福島第１原発の放射性汚染水からほとんどの放射性物質を除去し終えた処理水を、高濃度に汚染されている「フランジ型」タンクに戻して保管する 方針を決めた。汚染水の発生量を減らせず、処理水の貯蔵タンクの容量が逼迫（ひっぱく）してきたため。東電は処理水の移送計画を原子力規制委員会に提出 し、規制委は６日までに了承した。
当サイト既出関連記事：
w Delhi, July 8 : The Kudankulam nuclear power plant’s second unit is expected to go critical in a few days after the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB) gave the final clearance on Friday, informed sources said.
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In an interview to IANS earlier, Vladimir A. Angelov, the Director for Projects in India for ASE, the Engineering and Construction Division of Rosatom, had said that the plant have enhanced safety features.“It is a generation three plus plant, which takes into account the Fukushima event. The post-Fukushima safety enhancement requirements have already been implemented and being operated successfully,” said an official who did not want to be named.
“The reactor of the Kudankulam plant is protected from the impact of earthquake, tsunami, tornado and hurricanes,” the official added.
Read more.
Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) will reuse highly contaminated tanks at the crippled Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant to store radioactively contaminated water after treatment, company sources said.
The company will return contaminated water to flange-type tanks that had held such water after removing radioactive materials from the water using the Advanced Liquid Processing System (ALPS). This is because TEPCO has failed to prevent contaminated water from being generated on the premises of the plant or to secure enough storage tanks to hold treated water.
TEPCO had submitted the reuse plan to the Nuclear Regulation Authority, which approved it on July 6 or earlier. TEPCO is set to begin reusing contaminated tanks as early as this month.
Flange-type tanks are assembled by tightening multiple steel plates with bolts. Since such tanks have higher risks of leaking contaminated water, TEPCO is gradually replacing them with tanks assembled by welding steel plates together.
TEPCO is trying to freeze underground soil to surround reactor buildings at the Fukushima power plant to prevent underground water from flowing beneath them and becoming contaminated with radioactive materials.
However, as the efforts have proven ineffective, the utility has decided to reuse flange-type tanks, which it had initially planned to dismantle.
[…]
Read more.
A Conversation with Indian Point Director Ivy Meeropol
[…]Ivy Meeropol is the granddaughter of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who were executed for espionage on June 19, 1953 for allegedly passing A-bomb secrets to the Soviets. She is the daughter of Michael Meeropol, who — after his parents’ death — was adopted by songwriter Abel Meeropol, composer of the 1936 anti-lynching song “Strange Fruit” famously sung by Billie Holiday and the pro-integration song “The House I live In.”
Ivy Meeropol previously directed 2004’s Heir to an Execution, an extremely personal HBO film that examined the case of the Rosenbergs, whose contentious electrocution took place at New York’s Sing Sing prison — only 10 miles from the nuclear Indian Point Energy Center. The Brooklyn-born, Massachusetts-raised Meeropol’s absorbing, incisive, new documentary Indian Point investigates this 1960s-built nuclear power facility, which sits just 35 miles north of New York City and is currently working to relicense two of its reactors. It also probes the 2012 ousting of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s chairman, Gregory Jaczko, who was accused of bullying and intimidating employees, plus the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, triggered by a 2011 earthquake and tidal wave that caused meltdowns and the release of radioactive isotopes at the Japanese nuclear power plant.
The writer/director skillfully interweaves these three strands into a cohesive, comprehensive 94-minute tapestry exploring the controversial nuclear industry. In doing so, she evenhandedly interviews employees and executives of Entergy Corporation, which operates Indian Point, as well as activists opposing it. Her rare access enabled the intrepid filmmaker to enter both the Fukushima and New York facilities, allowing unusual insight into the inner workings, and politics, of the plants.
[…]
Your film has three main leitmotifs: Indian Point, Fukushima, and former NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko. Do you think that Jaczko was subjected to allegations about his treatment of employees and eventually left his position as chairman because he was too critical of the nuclear industry?
Yes, I do. I do. It was a confluence of events but they really raked him over the coals. This is a guy who self-admittedly says Fukushima changed how he viewed his job. He was a regulator who worked for a powerful industry and probably didn’t feel like he had a lot of power. Before Fukushima he bought into what the industry line was and what a lot of the NRC members believe, which is that a meltdown like Fukushima couldn’t happen.
Then when Fukushima happened, it changed the way he viewed his job. He became more of an activist chairman. He gathered the staff around him.
Much of what he was proposing wasn’t anything all that radical… He really was just trying to respond to Fukushima, to figure out what happened there and try to make sure it didn’t happen here in the US. Not the tsunami part — but the meltdown. He directed his staff to look closely at Fukushima and come up with recommendations for the NRC, which they did. The rest of the commissioners didn’t like it because — I’m totally convinced of this — they’re too close to the industry and knew it would cost the industry a lot to make the new changes and they weren’t going to do it.
I’m sure there was some real friction there, but the NRC blew it up into a different story, saying that Jaczko was a horrible boss and yelled at people. That he was an angry boss, he kept things from them, and he kept people out of meetings. When that didn’t really stick, the story became that he yelled at women staffers and made them cry. His staff, when he did resign, made this beautiful book for him, because they knew what he had been through and how he was really railroaded out of there.
I got to know him really well — he’s a gentle person, he’s not a tyrant. The NRC painted this picture of him but none of the allegations stuck in the end. The NRC’s Inspector General’s report came back with absolutely nothing on him. He’s unemployed now.
[…]
By the same token, what was so chilling was Brian saying ‘Our job is to get through our shift unscathed.’ The fact that that’s how he sees his job tells me that, longterm, this is untenable. Any kind of energy technology that is so potentially catastrophic that the people who work at the plant characterize their own job as making sure they just get through unscathed isn’t tenable. I really tried to go in with an open mind — not from my “no nukes” stance — and I came out of there really, really respecting everyone who worked there and feeling better about it in some ways, but also ultimately feeling this is a dying industry. Especially now, with solar and wind, we don’t need it.
[…]
You point out in the film that Indian Point is “on two fault lines.” Is that an earthquake area?
Yes. We’re not known for earthquakes. There are two fault lines. They knew about one when they built the plant. The other one was discovered afterward. From what I understand, we’re potentially due for a fairly large earthquake on the Ramapo Fault Line, which runs right under the plant.
7月5日は「ビキニの日」。フランス人のルイ・レアールが1946年7月5日、露出度の高いツーピースの水着をパリで発表。「ビキニ」と命名して世の中に普及した。
このビキニという名前、実は米軍の原爆実験から生まれたことをご存じだろうか。レアールの水着が発表される4日前の7月1日、21キロトン級の原爆「エイ ブル」が、太平洋のサンゴ礁「ビキニ環礁」に投下された。この原爆の破壊力になぞらえて、レアールは自身が発案した水着を「ビキニ」と命名したのだった。
ビキニ環礁では1958年までに、計67回の原爆・水爆実験が実施された。米誌ポピュラー・サイエンスによると、2016年現在も放射線量が高すぎて、当時の島民や、その子孫の帰還は進んでいない。
A nuclear power plant in Byron, Illinois. Taken by photographer Joseph Pobereskin (http://pobereskin.com).
