by Akio Matsumura
This article is available in Japanese and German.
The highly radioactive spent fuel assemblies at the Fukushima-Daiichi power plants present a clear threat to the people of Japan and the world. Reactor 4 and the nearby common spent fuel pool contain over 11,000 highly radioactive spent fuel assemblies, many of which are exposed to the open air. The cesium-137, the radioactive component contained in these assemblies, present at the site is 85 times larger than the amount released during the Chernobyl accident. Another magnitude 7.0 earthquake would jar them from their pool or stop the cooling water, which would lead to a nuclear fire and meltdown. The nuclear disaster that would result is beyond anything science has ever seen. Calling it a global catastrophe is no exaggeration.
If political leaders understand the situation and the potential catastrophe, I find it difficult to understand why they remain silent.
The following leaves little to question:
- Many scientists believe that it will be impossible to remove the 1,535 fuel assemblies in the pool of Reactor 4 within two or three years.
- Japanese scientists give a greater than 90 percent probability that an earthquake of at least 7.0 magnitude will occur in the next three years in the close vicinity of Fukushia-Daiichi.
- The crippled building of Reactor 4 will not stand through another strong earthquake.
- Japan and the TEPCO do not have adequate nuclear technology and experience to handle a disaster of such proportions alone.
Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon wrote a letter to Japan’s Ambassador to the United States, Mr. Ichiro Fujisaki, on April 16, 2012, discussing his fact-finding trip to the Fukushima Daiichi site.
Senator Wyden, senior member of the United States Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, mentioned that “the scope of damage to the plants and to the surrounding area was far beyond what [he] expected and the scope of the challenge to the utility owner, the government of Japan, and to the people of the region are daunting.” He also mentioned that “TEPCO’s December 21, 2011 remediation roadmap proposes to take up to ten years to complete spent fuel removal from all of the pools on the site. Given the compromised nature of these structures due to the events of March 11, their schedule carries extraordinary and continuing risk if further severe seismic events were to occur.”
Many of us echo Senator Wyden’s concerns.
Has the government of Japan and other world leaders considered the facts above that would lead to a global catastrophe, and do they have a clear strategy to prevent this worst case scenario? Are there any means to shorten the period for the completion of removal spent fuel from all of the pools, in particular of Reactor 4, within two years or so? Are we able to trust such extraordinary tasks to TEPCO and the private sector?
I believe that the government of Japan should lead the way and embrace all means at its disposal in order to prevent a disaster that would affect our dozens of generations of our descendants. In this context, I cannot help but consider the role of the military in addition to the international technical support team. They possess the technological and logistical capacity that a company such as TEPCO does not.
Deploying the Japanese self defense force (military) inside the country’s borders would be an incredibly controversial political decision, but the political fallout for the government from this step would pale in comparison to having such an immense global catastrophe occur on its watch.
For this reason, I flew to Japan from New York in April to convey my concerns to Japanese political leaders. Ambassador Mitsuhei Murata and I met with Mr. Fujimura, Chief Cabinet Secretary, who assured us he would convey our message to Prime Minister Noda before his departure for Washington to meet with President Obama on April 30. Both leaders might have discussed the Fukushima nuclear accident issue at their private meeting, but the idea for an independent assessment team and international help for the disaster were not mentioned publicly. I am old enough to understand the politics of the matter, but I cannot accept them. It will be an irreversible mistake that affects our population for thousands of years if they do not take action now.
If this catastrophe occurred, regardless of policy and politics, all 440 nuclear power plants throughout the world would be forced to shut down, yet our descendants no matter what will have to carry the risk of radioactive materials in the nuclear waste repository for 100,000 to 200,000 years.
This is a long amount of time to conceive of, so let me put it in context. It is said that our ancestors might have made their journey to the rest of the world from South Africa about 100,000 years ago, and crafted our first tools of the Stone Age about 20,000 years ago. We will need the same amount of time that our human species has existed for in order to safely deposit radioactive material! How come do we envision the poison to be transferred on to our descendants for so long and how will we find a way to indicate the location of the radioactive repository? Are we sure that the hundred radioactive repositories throughout the world be protected from severe seismic events for this incredible period of the time?
If this global catastrophe occurs, the best we can hope is that the memory of our disaster might be passed on to our future generations in the hope that they might invent the new technology to prevent them from another such catastrophe.
We need more people to sound the warning bell like you are doing for humanity’s stupidity, greed and short-sightedness.
There must be a reason why governments of the world and Japan do not take every action to protect us all and that reason is military. Nuclear weapons are the must-have for every country and any manafacturing plant is highly likely to be underneath an existing nuclear facility. How else would you hide somethiing which has tell-tale signatures except for under an existing ‘peaceful’ nuclear energy generating plant.
So, what happens when there is a natural disaster and your underground complex is destroyed. Much of your weapons-making facility is destroyed also along with multiple melt-down and destruction of surface buildings. It all makes the natural disaster look so much worse than it really was because you have the added destruction of the weapons factory too.
All speculation? How naieve.
Governments work this way and do not care about their people if their national security is at risk and this is what is happening in Japan and the other countries of the world know exactly what is going on due to all the spy satellite images. The problem is that no-one can blow the whistle as they are all playing the same game.
There can be no other explanation why the governments of the world do not club together and try to collectively sort out this mess. We, the people , are ruled by a bunch of uncaring, greedy and callous men who will do anything to protect their own interests. We need to show them we are not going to allow them to sit back an kill us all.
For the sake of the current Japanese people, all our children and their offspring in the future.
Dear Akio,
I am again reminded of the more than 1700 strategic nuclear weapons
kept ready to launch–within 30 seconds to 3 minutes–by the US and
Russia. These weapons await a political earthquake the leaders say
will never come. In this case, they ignore the warnings of their best
scientists, who tell them such a war will kill most people on the
planet
As in the case of Fukushima, nuclear power is the source of the
ultimate threat of destruction and perhaps even human extinction. In
both cases, our leaders cannot rise above their national and economic
concerns to see that it is the *human species* that is at stake, not
just an industry or some national concern.
Thank you for your most important work, to bring attention to this
issue which poses the greatest and most immediate of all threats to
human survival.
Best regards,
Steven Starr
http://www.nucleardarkness.org
http://www.nuclearfamine.org
Thank you for giving us warnings. I think we should be more seriously concerning this situations.
I lack credentials to provide professional comments on nuclear power plants, but in my thirty-year military career I had extensive experience with nuclear weapons, and the effects of radiation exposure are the link between the two. As a career naval officer, I was a qualified nuclear weapons delivery pilot, and in intelligence assignments, a Nuclear Weapons Deployment Officer, and created Nuclear Weapon Target Annexes for U.S. European Command War Plans.
In my post military career I directed the research and writing of unclassified histories for the U.S. Defense Nuclear Agency of the nine atmospheric oceanic nuclear test operations in the Pacific and the Atlantic. To do this, thousands of previously classified operation plans and post operation technical reports were declassified. The specific purpose was to revisit the success and failures of radiological badging of thousands of military personnel participating in these nuclear effects test operations. Yields from modest kilotons at Operation Crossroads, to the unexpected monster thermonuclear yield of Shot Bravo during Operation Castle were involved. The Bravo shot was designed to yield 4 to 6 megatons. It ran-a-way with a yield of 15 megatons and led to the most significant accidental radiological contamination ever caused by the United States. Accidents do happen, even when the most qualified experts are involved. Also involved, was the crew of the Japanese fishing boat Daigo Fukuryu Maru (Lucky Dragon Number 5). The ship was well outside of the announced test restricted area, but the unexpected high yield and change in wind direction caused serious radiological contamination of the crew and ship. Islanders on atolls outside of the predicted danger zone also received dangerous radiation levels. Nature always has a vote in these events.
These nuclear tests were carefully planned and executed. All military personnel were badged and personnel involved in decontamination operations were monitored with time restrictions determined by the measured levels of radiation. The sailors, airmen and soldiers were disciplined and followed orders.
If the Japanese military is called into service for fire suppression by helicopters and decontamination operations on the ground at Fukushima and elsewhere in Japan, we can expect high levels of discipline and rigorous attention to badging and time of exposure. There is no other effective use of human resources in a radiation environment. There can be no vision of heroic attempts to lift spent fuel assemblies from damaged or drained spent fuel pools. Fuel rods are nested in assemblies. Depending upon the type of assembly in use, it would weigh 320kg (705 pounds) or 658 kg (1,450 pounds). Assemblies are moved by cranes, not humans, and they are hot. TEPCO reports that the current spent pool at reactor number 4 is 50 degrees centigrade ( 122F). The International Atomic Energy Agency reported that the number 4 spent pool temperature was 84C (183F) in March of this year. If the pool is compromised, the rods in the assemblies begin to burn with fatal- to- human radiation levels. Discipline and courage are irrelevant in these conditions.
However, discipline and courage would be most relevant downwind from a compromised spent fuel tank at reactor number 4. If the wind vector is south, sending radiation over millions of civilians in the Tokyo-Yokohama metropolitan area, how many of them would be badged? Has the government written and promulgated an evacuation plan? And where would they go? There may be plans to evacuate the tens of thousands of U.S. military personnel and their dependents, but that is a fractional solution to the potential problem.
Don’t forget nature’s vote in this dangerous scenario. When, where and what magnitude will the earthquakes occur that challenges whatever has been done to prepare for those events? And what will be the outcomes? Ultimately, this will be a global event if the pool at number 4 fails.
Answers to these critical questions will be written after the fact. At a minimum, what is required is an independent international assessment of preparations for the inevitable earthquakes and possible tsunami.
Japan, and certainly not TEPCO, must not make decisions alone that will affect the world; and every country must offer technical and engineering assistance to take every possible protective action.
I agree that the powers that be should work as fast as possible to fix as much as thay can; however, what’s the point of broadcasting a doomsday scenario that cannot be fixed? To make sure everyone is in a complete panic? Seems like we already know the situation is a catastrophe that we are not capable of fixing within the probable time frame we’re looking at. What else is there to say to the people at large? A daily reminder that earth will be radioactive toast within a few years and there’s nothing we can do about it?
Because obviously we need more push for this to get solved if there’s any hope? Pressure on Japan to allow global help? Just my initial thought.
do i understand you to be suggesting that Ignorance is Strength?
From the day of the disaster we have been covering these unfolding events. Our news site is based on the Northwest Coast of British Columbia, Canada. All our local politicians have ignored all the warnings, ours and those from professionals in Japan. The Tsunami debris is presently landing on our shores. Only one small native community has set up a monitoring station and when they did tests for exposure after the original reactor events occurred, Health Canada dismissed them and argued against them, stating they were mis reading the results and were doing them wrong.
It is our belief, people can handle the truth. Even if they are told they are going to die. They begin to get close to their families or take measures they deem appropriate. To not inform is just another crime to the one already unfolding; the results of using nuclear energy.
Here is a scenario, however unlikely. We tell everyone repeatedly. Then some lone guy working alone finds a way to replicate the ability of the thyroid glands absorption of cesium in a film or a powder. Maybe some other guy, (we have lots of great undiscovered brains in the world) develops a similar product which can be spread by planes like fire retardant. Or maybe some gal comes up with an element which binds plutonium and uranium which will stop the reaction all together.
None of these undiscovered solutions will occur if we do not tell people to look for them and advise them of the urgency, that all reproductive life will stop, all plant and animal life will fail to reproduce if a solution is not found immediately.
We imagine this might get people, all people, thinking. Leaving it up to the military, the governments and officialdom is what got us here in the first place and they have already proven themselves to be perfectly useless.
We will tell everybody, as we do, at least once a month.
Merv
And to note, two significant quakes in the past 24 hours, a 5.8 and a 6.0 off of Honshu. Time is running out.
Dear Akio.
A group of radiation biologists in the US have created BioShield pills proven to protect DNA from ionizing radiation. Our results are being published in the journal Radiology proving significant protection if this completely safe pill is given one hour before CT scans.
What is your best advice is building awareness of such a breakthough (could also be a beverage) that would significantly protect Japanese citizens against Cesium, plutonium, etc?
We would like to help but it is hard to penetrate Japan’s government denial.
James Ehrlich, MD
Nice idea, but outside the scope of even science fiction: ionising radiation, according to the laws of physics, can damage the DNA molecule; no pill can change the laws of physics, and thus cannot prevent the damage.
Here is awareness, all radioactive material can be neutralized in minutes with the Baumgartner process, and there are other ways also. Nuclear half-life modification tech http://www.gdr.org
Thank you Ms. Parker-Waites for your suggestions. The current issue of the journal Radiology features the study we did in Germany proving for the first time that a safe pill can significantly protect DNA from breakage from a CT scan. (Realist–we are simply neutralizing mutagenic free radicals efficiently with optimal formulation of agents—no science fiction needed).
John–I am beginning to put up a website for purchase…one can go to http://www.bioshieldpill.com/sales at this point.
Where can one get said pill or beverage?
Hi Akio,
Excellent site, great work.
Here’s my idea: DAM IT: Other than removing the heavy 1500 fuel assemblies /11000 rods, one could simply consider building a concrete rim around the plants, like a “volcanic rim”, providing the strongest (natural!) shape, with the prime function of cooling and containing whatever nuclear fissile material in it. These “ponds” comprosing each individual plant would be topped up with water and cooled as a “used PLANT pool”.
The Japanese authorities have been stated to be prepared to consider “pouring concrete over it” or “encasing it” but that would not stop the meltdowns of each individual plant since hard concrete doesn’t cool like we learned in Chernobyl which is still burning underground til this day and probably will be for the next centuries to come. Apart from that it would be a flimsy cover since the concrete would have to be (newly) steel enforced to give it any relative strength.
The current concrete ruins are made of a “steel enforced” type of concrete. The heat of the uncooled fissile materials present there will have already weakened the steel in the concrete – hence all the concrete around the base is to be considered useless in strength when the next quake comes, other than Tepco states in it’s 2012 may 25 5th pdf update focussing on “cracks” in the concrete. It’s more like “cement” now, not steel enforced concrete.
The cores are said to have become “fluid” and nuclear experts have questioned the (incredible) damage due to the overheating of the cores. As any fireman will confirm concrete looses it’s strength once the steel inside had been overheated.
What more do the Japanese have to put up with before someone takes action?
I’m just thinking out of the box: “DAM IT” (not damn it), SEAL IT then FLOOD IT.
Piping could later be “hung in” (like in an aquarium) to prevent initial perforation (weakening) of the base. As long as you get the cooling situation under control first all other consequences should be relatively minor compared to the risk of a spent fuelrod catching fire, especially because a spent fuelrod fire would contain (far) more plutonium than for instance an overheating plant vapour (like Two Mile Island).
With a enclosed (non-pressurized) condensation-recirculation roofing this encasing would at least prevent emission of (now open-air vented) fumes, smoke and steam.
Even in case of the expected earthquake, one would prefer have a thick WALL around it present already tomorrow, if not today. By surrounding the whole plant with walls it will (at least) become more stable and controllable in the most simplistic way and possibly prevent a final blow for humanity in 8 years time when the next big quake is due. (check the history of the previous tsunami around 869 AD and the following decade of seismo-geological records).
Why not put the Fukushima-Daichi problem on top of every university’s science department or physics classes worldwide? Build models! Make it a priority….
Japan has some of the most advanced technology and robotics in the world. Surely this can be adapted and employed to remove and isolate safely the fuel rods (say several tens a day once up and going). And other nations could surely contribute to such an effort. It is extraordinary that this situation is continuing with no real action being taken, given that it undoubtedly poses a major risk of global proportions and high probability. It should be the no. 1 international priority given the stakes, there have been credible estimates that this could pollute fatally all life in the northern hemisphere as a worst case. It is clear evidence of the collective idiocy of humanity (or its leadership) that every day the news is filled with relative trivia that occupies people’s attention yet there is no real action on a threat of this magnitude, which should already be well underway to resolution.
JAPAN AND ALL OTHERS CAPABLE STOP GAMBLING WITH HUMANITY’S FATE AND ACT NOW! REMOVE AND RENDER SAFE THE SPENT FUEL RODS NOW!
DO NOT LOSE ANOTHER DAY IN SUICIDAL INACTION! ACT NOW!
All radioactive material can be neutralized with the Baumgartner process. http://www.gdr.org
Freezing the rods to move them or neutralize in place.Yes
Tepco has already fortified reactor # 4. so it will not topple. Also all those spent fuel rods are coated with crc 2 or cerconium 2 . This means they would have to reach 1625 dgrees fahrenheit to ignite. This is not going to happen. Also the total amount of radiation released so far from Fukushima is only 1/10 th that of Chernobal.
Nicholas, I cannot find any information on the internet verifying what you wrote… Can you provide this?
In my opinion, TEPCO and the Japanese government are not capable of handling the worst-case scenario. There will be no choice but putting tons and tons of cement onto the spent fuel pool of reactor number 4 that come down to ground. To act quickly, helicopters and materials to cover exposed fuel should be placed very close to Fukusima Daiichi, but I have not heard any news of this move.
“Prepare for the worst” is the key to crisis management but they miserably failed to handle this nuclear disaster. I do not want to see the same situation happens again.
If we cannot immediately bring the Reactor 4 spent fuel rods to the ground, then we must immediately bring the ground up to support the floor that the fuel pond is sitting on; we must immediately fill and surround the Reactor 4 building with dirt or even styrofoam.
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