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And the Band Played On…

Read in French, German, Japanese (日本語 ), Korean,, and Spanish

Scott Jones, Ph.D.

There is historical evidence that the Titanic’s orchestra heroically continued to play until the ship made its final plunge to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.  There is some temptation to compare that snippet of history to what is playing out in Japan following the decision of the Olympic Committee to award the 2020 Summer Olympic Games to Tokyo.  The theatrical command that, “The show must go on,” may be an appropriate observation, but there are monumental differences in the situations.

The human loss of life on the Titanic was indeed shocking, partially so because the Titanic was professionally declared to be unsinkable.  The music from Fukushima is decidedly unnerving. It is the sounds from the seriously damaged reactor building number four as its tilt increases in its agonizing slow collapse.  That collapse will trigger a one-hundred foot fall of the spent fuel rod cooling tank, exposing the fuel rod assemblies and creating a nuclear disaster more than a thousand times greater than Hiroshima.

Japan will be well remembered by those who survive the global consequences of the resulting radiation hell.  The memories will be starkly mixed.  Sympathy will soften the memories of the thousands of innocent civilians killed in Hiroshima and Nagasaki as the result of wartime attack of nuclear weapons.  There will be no sympathy for the refusal of Japan to immediately request international assistance to determine what could be done to stem the cascade of increasing risks following the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami.… Continue reading

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Japan, Swallow Your Pride and Ask for Help

Akio Matsumura

Read in Japanese (日本語 ), Korean, French and German.

Japan is an island nation, connected to the rest of the world through the Pacific Ocean’s currents. For thousands of years those waterways have carried Japanese sailors to distant shores. Now they carry radioactivity to our coasts. Japan’s reluctance to ask for international help in managing Fukushima’s cleanup would be one thing if it put only its own people at risk. But with the rest of the world facing health risks, Japan’s mismanagement of its nuclear crisis is irresponsible and should not be accepted by other governments, especially the United States, whose food supply stands to be contaminated.

The contaminated water is the result of a process that cools the spent fuel rods at the site. TEPCO is storing the water in almost 1000 tanks on the site. About one-third of these tanks are more vulnerable to leaks because their steel walls are bolted together rather than welded. TEPCO will have to continue to build several hundred more each year. And with the decommissioning of the power plant taking 40 years, where will the new water tanks go?

TEPCO is already having a tough time keeping up with the growing variety of problems that storing the water has caused. The Chairman of the Nuclear Regulation Authority described the plant to the Japan Times as being like a “haunted house” in which “mishaps keep happening one after the other.” The Guardian reports that extremely high levels of radiation are coming from one tank.… Continue reading

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More Thoughts on Mt. Fuji’s Risks

Read in Japanese (日本語 ) and Spanish.

 

Dear Mr. Matsumura,

I read with interest your article on the risk of Mt. Fuji’s possible eruption in the not so far future. Such a scenario is not only possible, but according to the experts it is highly probable. Consequently, all measures should be taken to avert any unnecessary risks to the population in the nearby region. This includes protection of all nearby communities, industrial facilities, hospitals, transport and communication infrastructure, etc. Each of these aspects has its own features and requires a different type of protection and safeguards. All of them should be carefully studied and protected, but also the combination of their risks must also be taken into account.

The number of towns and villages around Mt. Fuji appalls me. I don’t know anything about land use planning in Japan, but given the historical information available it seems obvious that the necessary precautions should have been taken before authorizing the construction of residences, industrial facilities, including nuclear power plants. I imagine that the emergency plans must be drawn in the event of an eruption, and this should include evacuation of civilians, protection of infrastructure and critical potentially dangerous facilities of all kinds. Your article draws the attention to the risk of a nuclear accident triggered by an eruption, which is a legitimate concern. It seems to me that a greater hazard would be the lack of a rational plan to handle the emergency, be it nuclear or of any other sort.… Continue reading

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VIDEO – Nuclear Risks: All It Takes Is One

Akio Matsumura speaks with nuclear expert and educator Arnie Gundersen about the continued risks of Fukushima. The two come to the conclusion that Tokyo Electric must be removed from the clean-up process. Arnie also discusses his 40 years in the nuclear industry, and how the worst day of that career led him to conclude that a nuclear power plant can have “Forty Good Years and One Bad Day.”

 

The conversation starts at 4:15.

40 good years and one bad day from Fairewinds Energy Education on Vimeo.… Continue reading

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Beyond Control: Our Loosening Grasp on Nuclear Security

Read in French, German, Japanese (日本語 ), and Spanish.

To most, nuclear security means Iran and North Korea. While these do present global security threats, the intersection of many under-discussed components of nuclear power, such as nuclear waste, reprocessing, and more power plants in the developing world, has the ability to cause major global crisis if not immediately prepared for by military and civilian leaders.

 

In early July, the UN International Atomic Energy Agency concluded a week long ministerial conference on nuclear security where analysts found, Bloomberg’s Jonathan Tirone reported, “Japan’s Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant, whose 2011 meltdowns dislocated 160,000 people, may provide a new blueprint for terrorists seeking to inflict mass disruption.”

 

The nuclear industry is burgeoning worldwide. Some 100 new reactors have been proposed to be constructed in coming years, bringing the world total near 600 reactors. This proliferation of nuclear power will tip the balance so the security risks outweigh the benefits and place the world’s people in harm’s way.

The big business opportunities that go with plant construction and the prestige that comes with being a nuclear power generator cause companies and countries to gloss over potential disaster and proliferation risks.

Many of these new plants will be in developing countries — first-time owners of nuclear power with relatively unstable governments, uncertain security capacities, and higher percentages of unskilled labor. Developed countries — with strong regulatory frameworks, good training programs, and competent engineers, managers, and scientists — have proven several times over that their plants are susceptible to human error or natural disaster.… Continue reading

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Global Education: Austrian Students Search for the Missing Link

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Read in German.

I am proud to introduce the work of a unique class of high school students in Austria, under the guidance of two teachers, Hermann and Lenore (pictured left). They have spent their semester looking at different facets of the Fukushima disaster and preparing essays expounding on their reactions. They have relied heavily, but not entirely, on the work available on this site.

 

Read the class pamphlet

 

For the past 36 months this site, www.AkioMatsumura.com, has focused on the Fukushima Daiichi disaster and provided expert scientific, medical, and political commentary to better understand the implications of an ongoing nuclear issue. We have connected nuclear experts, diplomats, medical experts, and power plant technicians in order to provide a complete picture. In other words, we see the importance of establishing horizontal connections between professions, rather than limiting our perspective to one area of expertise.

The Fukushima disaster is only one example of why we need to Find the Missing Link. Before this I worked to stem religious conflict, create political unity in Asia, and create global environmental awareness.

To me, finding the missing link is discovering solutions to the gaps that exist between the silos of our vertical thinking. What problems do we face that we had never anticipated, or at least not discussed appropriately? Fukushima is certainly one.

A pivot to true horizontal thinking – connecting groups and fields otherwise unconnected – is the only viable approach to resolve the issues we will face throughout the 21st century.… Continue reading

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Experts Explain Effects of Radioactive Water at Fukushima

Read in French, German and Japanese.

 

Introduction

by Akio Matsumura

Contaminated water is posing a new problem at the Fukushima site. Tepco must continue to cool the irradiated fuel rods, but has not devised a permanent and sustainable disposal process for the highly radioactive contaminated water that results. While they have a process that can remove much of the radiation from the water, some elements like tritium – a carcinogen – cannot be removed and is concentrating at magnitudes much higher than is legal. Tepco wants to spill the water into the Pacific Ocean in order to dilute the tritium levels to legal amounts, but fishermen skeptical of the power company oppose the move. Meanwhile, Tepco is storing the contaminated water in tanks. Unsurprisingly, those tanks are leaking (NYT). They admit they will eventually run out of space for the storage tanks.

Management of the contaminated cooling water has come to be the most demanding and dangerous issue that Tepco has faced since 2011.

Fukushima Water


Background

According to the Japan Times (excerpted):

As of May 7, Tepco had routed 290,000 tons of radioactive water into some 940 huge tanks at the complex, but 94,500 tons remain inside the basement floors of the reactor buildings and other facilities.

Tepco must perpetually pour water over the melted cores of reactors 1, 2, and 3 via makeshift systems to prevent the fuel from melting and burning again.

But the cores’ containment vessels were damaged by the meltdowns, allowing the highly radioactive coolant water to leak and flow into the basements.

… Continue reading
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Take Action at Fukushima: An Open Letter to Secretary General Ban Ki-moon

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Read in Japanese, French, Spanish , Portuguese, or German.

Dear Secretary General Ban Ki-moon:

You no doubt observed the Fukushima disaster on March 11, 2011, with terror and worry: what would another nuclear disaster mean for state relations, especially in your home region of East Asia? Fortunately, it seemed, the effects were largely kept to Japan’s islands and were less than many experts anticipated. Within weeks the stories dissipated if not disappeared from the major media outlets, only to be resurrected with personal interest stories of a hero or an especially tragic case of a lost loved one.

But the crisis is not over. Today, Martin Fackler reported in the New York Times that radioactively polluted water is leaking out of the plants and that the site is in a new state of emergency. Mitsuhei Murata, Japan’s former ambassador to Switzerland, wrote a letter last year that brought international attention to the thousands of radioactive spent fuel rods at the site and the danger their vulnerability presents; he has testified to this several times before Japan’s parliament. International experts, independent and of the International Atomic Energy Agency, have commented that the Tokyo Electric Power Company’s plans for the removal of the rods from the site and their storage in a safer, if still temporary, location are optimistic if not unrealistic.

The news media has done an adequate if meager job of reporting the many issues the fuel rods present. The radioactive fuel must be continuously cooled in order to stay safe; the improvised electric system that maintains this cooling has failed several times, once for more than 24 hours, both on its own and because of hungry rats.… Continue reading

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Former Chairman of Nuclear Regulatory Commission: Reactors Should Be Phased Out

Read this in German and Japanese (日本語).

Dr. Gordon Edwards, a well respected nuclear expert, explains the background of Chairman Jaczko’s decision:

Gregory Jaczko, Chairman of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission until last year, has arrived at a very basic realization: every potentially dangerous machine should have an emergency “off” switch that shuts everything down completely. And nuclear power reactors don’t have one. So, he concludes, all power reactors should be phased out.

How many action adventure movies show the hero disabling an explosive device or cutting the power to some monstrous killing machine just in the nick of time — mere seconds before total disaster erupts? In the blink of an eye the device or machine goes from malevolent to benign — from catastrophic to harmless — because someone pushed the “off” switch.

But a nuclear power reactor cannot be turned off completely, no matter what the emergency may be. Talk about a design flaw! Imagine a car that can’t be stopped, or a fire that cannot be put out.

Yes, there are “fast shutdown systems” in every nuclear reactor that can stop the nuclear chain reaction in less than two seconds, and they usually work quite well. The Three Mile Island reactor was “shut off” instantly, at the first sign of trouble; it only melted down later. The three operating Fukushima Dai-ichi reactors all “shut themselves off” automatically before the tsunami hit; but they all melted down anyway.

The problem is, shutting off the nuclear chain reaction does not stop the heat production.… Continue reading