Monthly Archives: August 2013

Abenomics — Repressed from “Dear Kitty. Some blog.”

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“Dear Kitty. Some blog” posts this video accompanied by the following short description:

” Japan’s tough talk on Fukushima just a power-play

Aug. 28 — Tepco, operator of the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant, is facing increased government oversight. But safety may not be the only reason for the additional scrutiny.

Reuters’ Jon Gordon reports. ”

The post also includes an article by John Marion that discusses the Japanese government’s involvement in the cleanup, the leaking storage tanks and Fukushima workers’ exposure to radioactive elements.

Tepco faces 132 olympic pools worth of radioactive water — Bloomberg

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Read this article that explains what is necessary to clean up the contaminated water from Fukushima Daiichi.

” Tokyo Electric Power Co. (9501) has accumulated the largest pool of radioactive water in the history of nuclear accidents. The utility must now decide what to do with it: dump in the ocean, evaporate into the air, or both.

The more than 330,000 metric tons of water with varying levels of toxicity is stored in pits, basements and hundreds of tanks at the wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant. The government said this week it will take a bigger role in staunching the toxic outflow that’s grown to 40 times the volume accumulated in the atomic disaster at Three Mile Island in the U.S.

Processing and disposing of the water, enough to fill a very large crude oil tanker or 132 Olympic-size swimming pools, will be one of the most challenging engineering tasks of our generation, former nuclear engineer Michael Friedlander said. Tokyo Electric has chopped down forest to add more water tanks at the site 220 kilometers (137 miles) northeast of Tokyo.

The steel storage tanks are vulnerable to spills due to earthquakes as well as leaks, representing “a very clear and present danger to the plant site and to the people working there,” said Friedlander, who spent 13 years operating U.S. nuclear plants, including the Crystal River Station in Florida.

“There are really only a few ways you can get rid of it,” Friedlander said. “You put it in the ocean or it’s going to have to be evaporated. It’s a political hotspot, but at some point you cannot just continue collecting this water.” … “

Government must take over Fukushima nuclear cleanup — The Japan Times; The Loop

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” … In November, Tepco plans to begin the delicate operation of removing spent fuel from Reactor No. 4. There are 1,300 used fuel rod assemblies in a pool above the reactor. They weigh a total of 400 tons, and contain radiation equivalent to 14,000 times the amount released by the Hiroshima atomic bomb. The spent-fuel pool, standing 18 meters above ground, was damaged by the earthquake and tsunami and is in a deteriorating condition. It remains vulnerable to any further shocks, and is also at risk from ground liquefaction. Removing its spent fuel, which contains deadly plutonium, is an urgent task.

Even under ordinary circumstances spent-fuel removal is a difficult task, normally requiring the aid of computers. But due to the damage, removal of spent fuel from Reactor No. 4 and the five other reactors will have to be done manually. This work will be undertaken in arduous conditions, increasing the risk of yet another mishap.

And if something does go wrong, the consequences could be far more severe than any nuclear accident the world has ever seen. If a fuel rod is dropped, breaks or becomes entangled while being removed, possible worst case scenarios include a big explosion, a meltdown in the pool, or a large fire. Any of these situations could lead to massive releases of deadly radionuclides into the atmosphere, putting much of Japan — including Tokyo and Yokohama — and even neighboring countries at serious risk. … ”

read article

In the same light, hear Andrew Dewit, a professor in the School of Policy Studies at Rikkyo University, explain the risks of removing the 1,300 spent fuel rods at Fukushima Daiichi on The Loop.

watch video

Are the Japanese government lying about the fallout from Fukushima? — Newstalk

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” Two years ago I spoke to Alexis Dudden about the unfolding disaster in Japan. At the time she described it as beyond a cover-up and things have not changed for the better

A few days ago, Tokyo’s governor Naoki Inose claimed that the city’s bid for the 2020 Olympic Games would be unaffected by the fallout from the Fukushima nuclear disaster.

Yet, over two years on from the devastating tsunami and ensuing nuclear disaster at the Daichi plant, the situation seems to be showing no signs of abating.

. . .

“There is a willful determination that [the government] can get away with it, that they can get away with tricking the masses about the extent of the problem. The former ambassador to Switzerland wrote a letter to the International Olympic Committee, saying that the government lied,” says Dudden of a situation she believes is just as bad as Chernobyl in relation to its long-term impact.

Yet TEPCO has been getting the brunt of the blame – granted it is deserved. The government has described TEPCO’s handling of the crisis as Whack-A-Mole but there is a danger that they could make the company a scapegoat, while washing their hands of responsibility in increasingly radioactive waters.

“They blamed TEPCO for the last two years but they haven’t moved to disband the organization. Shares in TEPCO were doing well until recently so the people in charge profited in the interim. They are lying to the camera,” says Dudden.

In the wake of the disaster, the government allayed concerns about long-term problems with radiation, yet there were signs that contamination of the soil and water in affected was worse than first feared. … ”

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Japan official wants Fukushima operator Tepco to be liquidated — Reuters

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” (Reuters) – The operator of Japan’s wrecked Fukushima nuclear station, Tokyo Electric Power Co, should be liquidated, as its failure to learn from its mistakes fuels insecurity, says the governor of a prefecture hosting another of the utility’s atomic plants.

Tepco was nationalized last year and receives public funds to pay compensation to the 160,000 people who had to flee their homes after a 2011 earthquake and tsunami caused three reactor meltdowns in the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl in 1986.

Hirohiko Izumida, governor of Niigata prefecture north of Tokyo, has been arguing for two years that the utility should not be allowed to restart its Kashiwazaki Kariwa station, the world’s biggest nuclear plant, unless it gives a fuller account of the Fukushima meltdowns.

Izumida, himself a former energy official, is now upping the ante, saying he believes Tepco’s focus on getting the plant’s reactors started to save fuel costs of about $1 billion every month overlooks safety concerns. … ”

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