Monday, October 1, 2018

Very Radioactive Water at Fukushima Daiichi Must NOT Be Dumped in the Ocean


I've been chronicling narratives of Fukushima Daiichi's contaminated water for years now (academic work here and here).

FUKUSHIMA DAICHI IS A CONTAMINATED-WATER PRODUCING MACHINE

TEPCO must inject hundreds of tons of water into Daiichi's ruined reactor buildings to cool very hot and radioactive nuclear fuel.

Since reactor containment is cracked, much of this water cannot be collected and ends up in the water table or the Pacific Ocean.

That is why TEPCO built the ice wall to prevent contaminated water from the plant emptying into the Pacific.

However, the ice wall has been a failure, as predicted, although it may have reduced some of the hundreds of tons of contaminated water heading towards the ocean everyday.

The problem of contaminated water production is amplified by the fact that the Daiichi plant was built on the site of an underground river that was diverted when the plant was built in the 1960s. The 3/11 earthquake returned the river to its original location, adding hundreds of tons to the water circulating beneath the ruined reactors. TEPCO has tried to divert water running to the plant and has had some level of success but the basic problems remain.

TEPCO CANNOT FILTER STRONTIUM AND TRITIUM FROM CAPTURED CONTAMINATED WATER

TEPCO has been pumping up as much water as it could but has struggled to find technology capable of filtering strontium and tritium.

In 2014, TEPCO claimed to be able to filter strontium from water but it appears the company was mistaken because the latest news is reporting that filtered water stored at the plant in containers is measuring up to 600,000 Becquerels per liter, 20,000 times the safety standard.

Strontium is bioaccumulated in bones and the human brain.

Radioactive strontium is very, very bad for biological life.

But TEPCO has a problem because it is "running out of storage." I can tell you from following this disaster carefully that TEPCO has been running out of storage for years.

There is no doubt that water contaminated with strontium and tritium has been dumped.

ALTERNATIVES AND FAILURES OF ACCOUNTABILITY

TEPCO claims it has no other alternatives, although I've noted that when the option of dumping was presented to the public in the Asahi Shimbun this alternative was represented as the most cost-efficient option. I would say that only holds true if there is no full accounting of the costs to the environment and human health as a function of contamination (see here).

No nuclear government in the world is going to hold TEPCO responsible because they all face aging and contaminating nuclear plants whose operations have contaminated ground water, lakes, streams, rivers, bays and oceans for decades.

International conventions on dumping in the sea - such as The London Convention and Protocol - do not fully prevent a nation from dumping from along its own shorelines (see here).

Prevention of full scale dumping of highly contaminated water at Fukushima requires PEOPLE RISE UP and DEMAND their VOICES BE HEARD across the globe:

The Ocean - our global commons - is NOT A DUMPING GROUND!

The health of the oceans predicts our own fate, the health of humanity (see my blog post here that was actually censored back in 2012 when I wrote it: http://majiasblog.blogspot.com/2012/09/compromised-oceans-mean-compromised.html).

TEPCO and our brightest scientists and engineers must find a way to filter strontium from water and to reduce the tritium level REGARDLESS of economic costs.



LATEST NEWS
80% of ‘purified’ Fukushima plant water exceeds radiation limits (September 30, 2018).Jiji PressTOKYO (Jiji Press) — 
About 80 percent of water stored at the meltdown-hit Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power station after purification work still contains radioactive materials above the environmental standards, officials at the plant’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc., have admitted.

The revelation came at a time when TEPCO and the government are considering ways to dispose of the “purified” water, of which amount has risen as high as about 940,000 tons.

Yusuke Ogawa, Hiroshi Ishizuka, Noriyoshi Ohtsuki, and Chikako Kawahara (2018, September 29). Treated water at Fukushima plant far too unsafe to be dumped soon THE ASAHI SHIMBUN http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ201809290029.html

Some of the "processed" water showed concentrations of radioactive materials at more than about 20,000 times the standard used to determine if the water is safe enough to discharge into the ocean.

TEPCO has been treating the water with a device known as ALPS, or advanced liquid processing system. Water is accumulating at a rate of between 50,000 and 80,000 tons a year.

The latest study covered about 890,000 tons of the 940,000 tons of water that has gone through ALPS and is stored on-site.

Tests showed that strontium 90 was present in some tanks at levels of about 600,000 becquerels per liter of water, which is about 20,000 times the safety standard.


RELATED BLOG POSTS

Pacific Ocean tipping points http://majiasblog.blogspot.com/2014/11/pacific-ocean-tipping-points.html

Bioaccumulation: Cesium is One Among the 1000 Radionuclides Unleashed by Fukushima Bioaccumulation: Cesium is One Among the 1000 Radi...

Contaminated Water at Fukushima Daiichi Majia's Blog: Contaminated Water at Fukushima Daiichi ...
Will Fukushima Daiichi Kill Vast Swathes of Ocean life Majia's Blog: Will Fukushima Daiichi Kill Vast Swathes of ...

Endless Atmospheric and Ocean Emissions Majia's Blog: Endless Atmospheric and Ocean Emissions

How much Fukushima Fuel is in the Ocean http://majiasblog.blogspot.com/2012/09/how-much-fukushima-fuel-is-in-ocean.html

Ocean Releases Majia's Blog: Ocean Releases

Humanity’s End Foretold in Destruction of Oceans: Majia's Blog: Humanity's End Foretold in Destruction of Oceans

Compromised Oceans mean Compromised People: Majia's Blog: Compromised Oceans Mean Compromised People

Radiation plumes headed to N. America Majia's Blog: Fukushima Radiation Plumes in the Ocean Headed to ...

Majia’s Blog: The Art of Deception http://majiasblog.blogspot.com/2014/05/the-art-of-deception.html


3 comments:

  1. Let's assume that the gradual spread of radioactive material is indeed a great disaster which will have profound and destructive effects on the human species. Now for a few years after the Fukushima event articles would pop up now and then; but then a great silence descended on the matter and now one rarely even hears the word Fukushima. Almost never. Still if one puts the word in the search engine at YouTube numerous videos pop up which are fairly current and the titles sound much like they did six or seven years ago. Apparently the whole Pacific Ocean is poisoned, and we do not hear a thing about it. It seems it never really happened. It was, I guess, a staged event which may be why the Russian offer to help Japan was refused. Does that make sense?

    Does any of this make sense? Is there a way we can involve Aliens,UFO's, ET's in this? Also the nuclear waste storage facility that was to last 5,000 years near Carlsbad and which collapse has disappeared from the news. Ancient history.

    Out of sight and out of mind. It causes me to imagine a very poisonous snake crawling slowly towards a person snoozing in a tent. The snake crawls under the canvas side and moves ever so slowly towards the bed, then up on the bed and looks the man in the face, then strikes him on the neck. Twenty minutes later he is dead.

    How long do we have?

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  2. I am surprised that no one is mentioning Euripides. He is the writer who can best characterize the Liberals, especially in the Bacchae? What? You haven't read Euripides? Now then how can you understand America at this time?

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  3. The high school coach is a notorious drunk, the football team is filled with guys who have been arrested for a number of things: theft, disorderly behavior in an ice cream parlor, vandalism, etc. And the team is losing against its main rival. What do you do? Go home? Keep rooting and send out optimistic text messages, wonder if they can somehow cheat and still win . . . pretend you live in another town and ended up here by mistake? (If you suspect this is an analogy you get ten points! towards a Spartacus t-shirt) You might also pull out your copy of Hecuba and use you Iphone light to make out the words.

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