Fukushima: It's much worse than you think

[Guest guest]

http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/features/2011/06/201161664828302638.html

Fukushima: It's much worse than you think

Scientific experts believe Japan's nuclear disaster to be far worse than

governments are revealing to the public.

Last Modified: 16 Jun 2011 12:50

" Fukushima is the biggest industrial catastrophe in the history of mankind, "

Arnold Gundersen, a former nuclear industry senior vice president, told Al

Jazeera.

Japan's 9.0 earthquake on March 11 caused a massive tsunami that crippled the

cooling systems at the Tokyo Electric Power Company's (TEPCO) nuclear plant in

Fukushima, Japan. It also led to hydrogen explosions and reactor meltdowns that

forced evacuations of those living within a 20km radius of the plant.

Gundersen, a licensed reactor operator with 39 years of nuclear power

engineering experience, managing and coordinating projects at 70 nuclear power

plants around the US, says the Fukushima nuclear plant likely has more exposed

reactor cores than commonly believed.

" Fukushima has three nuclear reactors exposed and four fuel cores exposed, " he

said, " You probably have the equivalent of 20 nuclear reactor cores because of

the fuel cores, and they are all in desperate need of being cooled, and there is

no means to cool them effectively. "

TEPCO has been spraying water on several of the reactors and fuel cores, but

this has led to even greater problems, such as radiation being emitted into the

air in steam and evaporated sea water - as well as generating hundreds of

thousands of tons of highly radioactive sea water that has to be disposed of.

" The problem is how to keep it cool, " says Gundersen. " They are pouring in water

and the question is what are they going to do with the waste that comes out of

that system, because it is going to contain plutonium and uranium. Where do you

put the water? "

Even though the plant is now shut down, fission products such as uranium

continue to generate heat, and therefore require cooling.

" The fuels are now a molten blob at the bottom of the reactor, " Gundersen added.

" TEPCO announced they had a melt through. A melt down is when the fuel collapses

to the bottom of the reactor, and a melt through means it has melted through

some layers. That blob is incredibly radioactive, and now you have water on top

of it. The water picks up enormous amounts of radiation, so you add more water

and you are generating hundreds of thousands of tons of highly radioactive

water. "

Independent scientists have been monitoring the locations of radioactive " hot

spots " around Japan, and their findings are disconcerting.

" We have 20 nuclear cores exposed, the fuel pools have several cores each, that

is 20 times the potential to be released than Chernobyl, " said Gundersen. " The

data I'm seeing shows that we are finding hot spots further away than we had

from Chernobyl, and the amount of radiation in many of them was the amount that

caused areas to be declared no-man's-land for Chernobyl. We are seeing square

kilometres being found 60 to 70 kilometres away from the reactor. You can't

clean all this up. We still have radioactive wild boar in Germany, 30 years

after Chernobyl. "

Radiation monitors for children

Japan's Nuclear Emergency Response Headquarters finally admitted earlier this

month that reactors 1, 2, and 3 at the Fukushima plant experienced full

meltdowns.

TEPCO announced that the accident probably released more radioactive material

into the environment than Chernobyl, making it the worst nuclear accident on

record.

Meanwhile, a nuclear waste advisor to the Japanese government reported that

about 966 square kilometres near the power station - an area roughly 17 times

the size of Manhattan - is now likely uninhabitable.

In the US, physician Janette Sherman MD and epidemiologist ph Mangano

published an essay shedding light on a 35 per cent spike in infant mortality in

northwest cities that occurred after the Fukushima meltdown, and may well be the

result of fallout from the stricken nuclear plant.

The eight cities included in the report are San , Berkeley, San Francisco,

Sacramento, Santa Cruz, Portland, Seattle, and Boise, and the time frame of the

report included the ten weeks immediately following the disaster.

" There is and should be concern about younger people being exposed, and the

Japanese government will be giving out radiation monitors to children, " Dr MV

Ramana, a physicist with the Programme on Science and Global Security at

Princeton University who specialises in issues of nuclear safety, told Al

Jazeera.

Dr Ramana explained that he believes the primary radiation threat continues to

be mostly for residents living within 50km of the plant, but added: " There are

going to be areas outside of the Japanese government's 20km mandatory evacuation

zone where radiation is higher. So that could mean evacuation zones in those

areas as well. "

Gundersen points out that far more radiation has been released than has been

reported.

" They recalculated the amount of radiation released, but the news is really not

talking about this, " he said. " The new calculations show that within the first

week of the accident, they released 2.3 times as much radiation as they thought

they released in the first 80 days. "

According to Gundersen, the exposed reactors and fuel cores are continuing to

release microns of caesium, strontium, and plutonium isotopes. These are

referred to as " hot particles " .

" We are discovering hot particles everywhere in Japan, even in Tokyo, " he said.

" Scientists are finding these everywhere. Over the last 90 days these hot

particles have continued to fall and are being deposited in high concentrations.

A lot of people are picking these up in car engine air filters. "

Radioactive air filters from cars in Fukushima prefecture and Tokyo are now

common, and Gundersen says his sources are finding radioactive air filters in

the greater Seattle area of the US as well.

The hot particles on them can eventually lead to cancer.

" These get stuck in your lungs or GI tract, and they are a constant irritant, "

he explained, " One cigarette doesn't get you, but over time they do. These [hot

particles] can cause cancer, but you can't measure them with a Geiger counter.

Clearly people in Fukushima prefecture have breathed in a large amount of these

particles. Clearly the upper West Coast of the US has people being affected.

That area got hit pretty heavy in April. "

Blame the US?

In reaction to the Fukushima catastrophe, Germany is phasing out all of its

nuclear reactors over the next decade. In a referendum vote this Monday, 95 per

cent of Italians voted in favour of blocking a nuclear power revival in their

country. A recent newspaper poll in Japan shows nearly three-quarters of

respondents favour a phase-out of nuclear power in Japan.

Why have alarms not been sounded about radiation exposure in the US?

Nuclear operator Exelon Corporation has been among Barack Obama's biggest

campaign donors, and is one of the largest employers in Illinois where Obama was

senator. Exelon has donated more than $269,000 to his political campaigns, thus

far. Obama also appointed Exelon CEO Rowe to his Blue Ribbon Commission on

America's Nuclear Future.

Dr Shoji Sawada is a theoretical particle physicist and Professor Emeritus at

Nagoya University in Japan.

He is concerned about the types of nuclear plants in his country, and the fact

that most of them are of US design.

" Most of the reactors in Japan were designed by US companies who did not care

for the effects of earthquakes, " Dr Sawada told Al Jazeera. " I think this

problem applies to all nuclear power stations across Japan. "

Using nuclear power to produce electricity in Japan is a product of the nuclear

policy of the US, something Dr Sawada feels is also a large component of the

problem.

" Most of the Japanese scientists at that time, the mid-1950s, considered that

the technology of nuclear energy was under development or not established

enough, and that it was too early to be put to practical use, " he explained.

" The Japan Scientists Council recommended the Japanese government not use this

technology yet, but the government accepted to use enriched uranium to fuel

nuclear power stations, and was thus subjected to US government policy. "

As a 13-year-old, Dr Sawada experienced the US nuclear attack against Japan from

his home, situated just 1400 metres from the hypocentre of the Hiroshima bomb.

" I think the Fukushima accident has caused the Japanese people to abandon the

myth that nuclear power stations are safe, " he said. " Now the opinions of the

Japanese people have rapidly changed. Well beyond half the population believes

Japan should move towards natural electricity. "

A problem of infinite proportions

Dr Ramana expects the plant reactors and fuel cores to be cooled enough for a

shutdown within two years.

" But it is going to take a very long time before the fuel can be removed from

the reactor, " he added. " Dealing with the cracking and compromised structure and

dealing with radiation in the area will take several years, there's no question

about that. "

Dr Sawada is not as clear about how long a cold shutdown could take, and said

the problem will be " the effects from caesium-137 that remains in the soil and

the polluted water around the power station and underground. It will take a

year, or more time, to deal with this " .

Gundersen pointed out that the units are still leaking radiation.

" They are still emitting radioactive gases and an enormous amount of radioactive

liquid, " he said. " It will be at least a year before it stops boiling, and until

it stops boiling, it's going to be cranking out radioactive steam and liquids. "

Gundersen worries about more earthquake aftershocks, as well as how to cool two

of the units.

" Unit four is the most dangerous, it could topple, " he said. " After the

earthquake in Sumatra there was an 8.6 [aftershock] about 90 days later, so we

are not out of the woods yet. And you're at a point where, if that happens,

there is no science for this, no one has ever imagined having hot nuclear fuel

lying outside the fuel pool. They've not figured out how to cool units three and

four. "

Gundersen's assessment of solving this crisis is grim.

" Units one through three have nuclear waste on the floor, the melted core, that

has plutonium in it, and that has to be removed from the environment for

hundreds of thousands of years, " he said. " Somehow, robotically, they will have

to go in there and manage to put it in a container and store it for infinity,

and that technology doesn't exist. Nobody knows how to pick up the molten core

from the floor, there is no solution available now for picking that up from the

floor. "

Dr Sawada says that the creation of nuclear fission generates radioactive

materials for which there is simply no knowledge informing us how to dispose of

the radioactive waste safely.

" Until we know how to safely dispose of the radioactive materials generated by

nuclear plants, we should postpone these activities so as not to cause further

harm to future generations, " he explained. " To do otherwise is simply an immoral

act, and that is my belief, both as a scientist and as a survivor of the

Hiroshima atomic bombing. "

Gundersen believes it will take experts at least ten years to design and

implement the plan.

" So ten to 15 years from now maybe we can say the reactors have been dismantled,

and in the meantime you wind up contaminating the water, " Gundersen said. " We

are already seeing Strontium [at] 250 times the allowable limits in the water

table at Fukushima. Contaminated water tables are incredibly difficult to clean.

So I think we will have a contaminated aquifer in the area of the Fukushima site

for a long, long time to come. "

Unfortunately, the history of nuclear disasters appears to back Gundersen's

assessment.

" With Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, and now with Fukushima, you can pinpoint

the exact day and time they started, " he said, " But they never end. "

Follow Dahr Jamail on Twitter: @DahrJamail

Source: Al Jazeera

[Guest guest]

The spike could also be caused by the disruption of services, people forced to live out in the cold for days with little food or water, etc. Japan also had a very low infant mortality rate to begin with so a 35% increase might actually be just a couple of more deaths. This is a case where actual numbers would be more useful than a percentage. After all, if you had 2 deaths one month and 4 the next, that's a 100% increase.

In a message dated 6/16/2011 2:10:36 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, no_reply writes:

In the US, physician Janette Sherman MD and epidemiologist ph Mangano published an essay shedding light on a 35 per cent spike in infant mortality in northwest cities that occurred after the Fukushima meltdown, and may well be the result of fallout from the stricken nuclear plant.