Posted on

Why Nuclear Scientists Have Missed the Danger of Spent Fuel Pools

Dear friends: 

Since the Fukushima nuclear power plants accident in March 2011, there have been two types of contributions by nuclear scientists. One type, who represents the voice of TEPCO, has influenced the decision makers of the solutions to the accident, the government strategy of the evacuation zone, the timing of announcement of the core meltdown and the constant public campaign to give the impression that the situation is improving rapidly. The other type, who has been warning the government of the worsening situation, finds their influence over the decision makers and the media circle limited. However, I find it puzzling that there has been so little warning from the nuclear community about the potential for catastrophic accidents or terrorist attack involving the hundreds of spent fuel pools worldwide.  I received a clear explanation from Dr. Gordon Edwards, one of Canada’s best known independent experts on nuclear technology, uranium, and weapons proliferation. 

I hope you will better appreciate the serious issues of the spent fuel pools from these comments.

Akio

 

This article is now available in Japanese.

Dear Akio,

You asked me why there has been so little warning from the “nuclear establishment” (TEPCO and the regulatory agency) about the potential for catastrophic accidents involving the spent fuel pool in reactor number 4.

In the field of nuclear safety, the focus of attention has always been on analyzing and preventing catastrophic accidents involving the core of the reactor.  In comparison, little attention has been paid over the years to catastrophic accident scenarios involving the spent fuel pool.… Continue reading

Posted on

A Response from former CBS Anchor Rolland Smith

Dear friends:

I have received the response to my article, “Nuclear Disasters and the Danger of a Marginalized Media“, from the eminent international journalist, Mr. Rolland Smith, former co-host of The CBS Morning Program and the recipient of eleven Emmy awards.

Several decades ago Rolland pushed the idea of tackling human and natural disasters by connecting the world top quality experts from the different locations via satellite. He is one of few media persons I have met who has always looked at our human issues in a larger perspective. I was encouraged by his comments for the great need to join our heads together to find an innovative solution to bring Fukushima under control.  I think his global views as journalist would greatly contribute to bring to the attention of our media colleagues this potential catastrophe we have never faced.

Akio  

Dear Akio,

I have followed your posts on the Fukushima nuclear tsunami disaster. They are informative and contagious in their importance. Radiation contamination is not only a local, regional and a national tragedy for Japan it also has an exponential global effect.

I am disappointed that the global media has not latched onto this tragedy and problem in ways that would pressure governments, businesses and scientists to work under the aegis of truth in order to find innovative solutions to bring Fukushima under control.

Blame and false assurances are not important and are destructive at this stage. Complete cooperation in the sharing of knowledge is the only way Fukushima can be safely neutralized thereby preventing further tragedy to the people of Japan and subsequently to the world.… Continue reading

Posted on

Keeping Vigilant: Why Fukushima Will Remain in 2012 Headlines


2011 has not passed quietly. We witnessed massive grass-root protests, a natural disaster and nuclear accident, the end of the Iraq War, and the still-threatening collapse of the Euro. All will continue to transform the political and economic trajectories of their respective regions for years to come. Nevertheless, if the fourth reactor unit of Fukushima collapsed after another earthquake, the radiation from the resulting disaster would affect the people of Tokyo and Yokohama—an impossible evacuation zone—as well as East Asia and the rest of the world. I explain below why I believe this is the most serious issue to respond to as we enter 2012.

The Arab Spring, originating in Tunisia, has spread through Egypt, Bahrain, Morocco, Yemen, Syria, Libya, and Iran, and affected almost every country in the North Africa-Middle East region. Young Arabs have turned a new page and erased their negative image that permeated in the West throughout the last decade. Change in these countries will continue to be slow and will not always amount to progress, but we must acknowledge that we are witness to the 21st century revolution. And other protests sparked outside the region: in New York and eventually across the world the Occupy movement protested inequality, while in Russia a new generation voiced its disapproval of political cronyism. Time chose the Protesters for its Person of the Year.

A month after Mubarak stepped down in Egypt an earthquake triggered a tsunami that drowned part of Japan and heavily damaged four reactors in the Fukushima-Daiichi complex.… Continue reading

Posted on

Nuclear Disasters and the Danger of a Marginalized Media

By Akio Matsumura

 

UPDATE: A Japanese translation of this article is available here.

Mr. Reiji Yoshida wrote in The Japan Times on November 12, 2011:

Tokyo Electric Power Co. on Friday for the first time let reporters into the base camp for thousands of workers striving every day to fix the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant, showing off new dining facilities, a dormitory for single workers and the latest radioactivity monitors to check vehicles and clothing.

Tepco had long barred reporters from visiting J. Village in the town of Naraha, Fukushima Prefecture, the main gate police are using to control access to the 20 km no-go zone around the Fukushima plant.

On average, 2,100 workers a day are trying to tame the crisis at the Fukushima No. 1 plant, which experienced three reactor meltdowns in March.

Skilled engineers are badly needed at present to contain the crisis, as workers have to quickly finish their tasks before being exposed to dangerously high levels of radiation.

(Workers) should know the locations of valves, which pipes run where, and what’s inside them; cold water, hot water or steam,”

And they need to go quickly to their destination in the plant and speedily finish their work because the radiation is high.

 

I have focused for several months now on certain aspectsof the Fukushima disaster, especially the dangerous situation of reactor unit 4, where spent fuel rods are balanced on the second floor of a crippled building. It is heartening to see that people have taken interest.… Continue reading

Posted on

The Need for Independent Assessment of the Fourth Reactor

by Gordon Edwards, PhD

Read in Japanese and German.

In his recent blog, entitled “The Fourth Reactor and the Destiny of Japan”, Akio Matsumura correctly identifies the spent fuel pool in Unit 4 as the most serious potential threat for further massive radioactive releases from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

If not cooled by mechanical means for at least several years, the irradiated fuel in the spent fuel pool will overheat due to radioactivity alone. The heat generated by radioactivity must be removed as fast as it is being produced to keep the temperature of the nuclear fuel from soaring out of control.

If the temperature climbs toward 900 degrees C, the metal coating (“cladding”) on the outside of the fuel pellets rapidly deteriorates, releasing large quantities of radioactive gases and vapors.

At these elevated temperatures, the cladding also reacts with steam (H2O) to produce hydrogen gas (H2) which explodes with great force, as it did in Unit 4 on March 15 – blowing the roof off the building and providing a pathway for radioactivity to escape into the atmosphere.

At about 1000 degrees, the fuel cladding can catch fire, emitting tiny radioactive cinders – miniscule particles of irradiated fuel called “nuclear fleas” – particularly dangerous when inhaled or ingested.

Currently, the situation in Unit 4 is under control – but things could change quickly if the spent fuel pool collapses or the support structure is severely damaged by a strong aftershock.  It may then be impossible to cool the irradiated fuel effectively.… Continue reading

Posted on

The Fourth Reactor and the Destiny of Japan

By Akio Matsumura

This article is available in Japanese.

Since the accident at the Fukuhsima Daichi nuclear power plants, I have presented the opinions of several eminent scientists on the Fukushima disaster and we have received many insightful responses.  I as a layman am learning new terminologies and of potential problems that could continue to affect the area for hundreds of years.

From population to democracy, the issues I have studied in four decades of international work seem rather shortsighted when compared to a potential nuclear disaster that would affect our descendants for perhaps twenty thousand years.

As you are well aware, in January 2011 I began a campaign for the global survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to win the Nobel Peace Prize. The strong supporting articles several experts have contributed have encouraged me, and many political friends assure me that the message will not go unheard. They concur that my proposal is timely and would help increase the public awareness of risks associated with nuclear weapons.

However, the Fukushima nuclear disaster has convinced me that this campaign does not fully address the nuclear issue. I am now worried that nuclear power plants present a comparable risk to that of nuclear weapons—leaked radiation can make large areas uninhabitable for centuries. The area around Fukushima may come to be one. Thinking of the possible magnitude of such a disaster has led me to consider the balance between world energy needs and safety for human civilization.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon convened a high-level meeting on Nuclear Safety and Security on September 22, 2011, during the 66th UN General Assembly.… Continue reading

Posted on

Fading Memories and Lessons Learned

By Dr. Scott Jones

In a series appropriately named Lessons Learned, the U.S. military takes pride in documenting what it has learned from battles and campaigns. The assumption being that this record will guide strategies and tactics in future wars. The irony is not lost to the professional warrior that the major lesson to be learned from every war is that the next war starts with failure: peace has been lost.

A host of lessons were learned during my thirty years of military service.  While many memories have faded, some never will.  One in particular has specific relevance to the core purpose of this article.  In October 1952, on my second Korean War tour as a jet fighter pilot flying off a U.S. aircraft carrier, I was flying a low-level armed reconnaissance mission over North Korea.  U.S. forces controlled the air, and North Korean and Chinese forces rarely tried to move troops and supplies during the day.  Expectations were therefore low to see any movement of a military nature.  The assigned road for this mission made a zigzag climb out of the valley onto a plain leading to the Chinese border.  This was the end of my route and time to climb to a higher altitude for a direct return to the carrier task group.  However, as I climbed out of the valley I saw an oxcart on the road being escorted by soldiers.  The disciplined soldiers in their winter-white uniforms dove for protection into the deep ditches on either side of the road. … Continue reading

Posted on

One Japanese Citizen’s View of Fukushima Anarchy

By Toshio Nishi, PhD

Is our Japanese government lying to us?  Yes.

Is “lying” too strong a word to depict the government’s spectacular public show of its bungling? Would, then being “mendacious” be more accurate and kinder?

Semantics is not even an issue here. Good manners should no longer be expected from ordinary Japanese men and women who have been inhaling highly radioactive dust and vapor since March 11, 2011.  But we continue to behave. I assume it is a matter of pride that each of us refuses to become selfish in a crisis.

Don’t Drink Green Tea

Cesium has shown up dangerously condensed in our national beverage, green tea. Green tea is supposed to be good for our health. Must be, because the Japanese live the longest in the world.

Japan’s largest tea farm is in Shizuoka, about 320km (200 miles) south from Fukushima. Tea farmers cannot harvest the rich green leaves any more, for they cannot sell them. Now, cesium and other radioactive elements have invaded our milk, chickens, pigs, beef cows, vegetables and fruits.

It is disheartening to realize that the sea off Fukushima is one of the world’s three richest fishing zones. Some desperate fishermen, perhaps being defiant against their misfortune, go out to sea, but who would dare eat their catches? We ordinary citizens fail to comprehend the apparent and hidden magnitude of radioactive contamination that threatens to never end.

From the beginning of the disaster at Fukushima and for the first two months, one nuclear scientist after another from famous universities and government agencies appeared on nightly TV news programs, and intoned with a special atmosphere of possessing superior knowledge that radioactive dust and vapor or fish caught off the shores did not pose “an immediate health risk.”

… Continue reading
Posted on

Fukushima: The Crisis Is Not Over

This interview is now available in Japanese.

We are pleased to share an updated, redacted version of an interview with Mr. Arnie Gundersen assessing the current situation of the Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear power plant in Japan. Gundersen, a former vice president in the nuclear industry and chief engineer at Fairewinds Associates, believes the multiple risks are likely to deepen the crisis. Four of the plant’s six nuclear reactors were damaged in the earthquake and remain in a precarious state. Three of the units contained fuel, which now has coalesced into a difficult-to-cool molten blob. With time, however, their temperature will drop. The largest concern is with the fourth unit: its highly radioactive spent fuel pool is exposed and suspended above the reactor. Further damage to the site could cause the contents of the pool to spill out on the ground, moving the situation beyond the limits of of our scientific knowledge. The situation in the reactors with fuel all begins with increasing levels of heat.

Radioactive byproducts produce heat.

During the normal operation of a nuclear reactor, there is an accumulation of many man-made radioactive materials such as iodine-131, cesium-137, strontium-90, plutonium-239, and many others.

These radioactive byproducts continue to produce a lot of heat, even after the reactor is shut down, because radioactivity cannot be stopped.  This unstoppable heat is called “decay heat.”

Heat damages fuel, releasing hydrogen and radioactive gases.

Unless the decay heat is removed as fast as it is produced, the temperature will continue to rise, eventually damaging the fuel and letting radioactive gases and vapors escape.… Continue reading

Posted on

“Safe” and “Clean” Nuclear Power?

By Steven Starr

There are 440 commercial nuclear reactors now in operation in 30 countries around the world.  Each of these reactors creates and contains at least 100 times more long-lived radioactivity than was produced by the bombs which destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Thus a catastrophic accident at just one of these reactors has the potential to release as much radioactive fallout as would a nuclear war fought with 100 atomic bombs.

In other words, a nuclear reactor is a sort of nuclear-war-in-a-can, without the blast and fire that nuclear weapons produce, but with all of the long-lived radioactivity. If you happen to be a terrorist, this makes every nuclear reactor a radiological target-of-opportunity.

Yet most of our political leaders join with the representatives of the nuclear industry to tell us that nuclear power is a “safe” and “clean” form of energy.  Is it?  This concept may be hard to explain to the hundreds of thousands of people who have been forced to permanently evacuate their homes around Chernobyl and Fukushima, where radioactive fallout from previously “safe” and “clean” nuclear power plants has made the cities, towns and land uninhabitable.


Radioactive Waste

In fact, the potential for enormous releases of radioactivity exists at all U.S. and Japanese nuclear power plants, which for decades have stored their used or “spent” uranium fuel rods on site. There are 30 million used fuel rods stockpiled at U.S. reactors in “spent fuel pools”, which together contain about 20 times more long-lived radioactivity than was released from all atmospheric nuclear weapons tests.… Continue reading