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Physics Today: Japan’s Fukushima site is an ongoing morass
Japan’s Fukushima site is an ongoing morass
Toni Feder
November 2013
The world-scale nuclear disaster needs to be addressed by worldwide expertise, critics say.
<snip>
“They have got it wrong from A to Z,” says Paris-based international energy consultant Mycle Schneider. “The wrong tanks [for storing contaminated water], the wrong materials, the wrong site preparation and monitoring. A big worry is that a new earthquake would destroy one or more tanks or a reactor building with its spent fuel pool and we’d get massive releases into the environment.” The most pressing issues are dealing with the contaminated water—400?000 tons and counting—and ensuring that the reactor cores and the 15?093 fuel-rod assemblies onsite are kept under water. A failure to cool the fuel could lead to a buildup of decay heat, spontaneous combustion of the fuel cladding, and uncontrolled release of radioactivity.
The six boiling water reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant all suffered structural damage in the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami and the several reactor hydrogen explosions that followed. When backup generators flooded and failed, the cores of the three reactors that were working at the time melted through their primary containment vessels. Two and a half years later, some 400 tons of groundwater becomes contaminated daily as it flows into the site; pumping it out expands the onsite storage farm, currently around 1000 tanks, by two tanks every five days. And tons of radioactive water leaks into the Pacific Ocean each day. The government now admits this, says Mitsuhei Murata, a former ambassador to Switzerland. “And there is no immediate solution in sight.”
<snip>
The physical and technical complexities are exacerbated by the management of the remediation, which so far has been TEPCO’s responsibility, and by the breakdown of public trust in TEPCO and the government. In his research, Aldrich found that public trust in the government and national authorities plummeted from 85% in 2010 to 8% some three months after the March 2011 disaster. The distrust is the “biggest problem,” says Schneider. He and others note that it’s unrealistic to expect TEPCO, a utility company, to have the know-how to deal with a nuclear accident.
<snip>
“The nuclear accident cannot be solved by a single state or company,” says Murata. “If the world does not learn the lessons of Fukushima, this tragedy will take place again.” Still, he points to a few positive developments. The formation last year of the Nuclear Regulation Authority as a separate government body may lead to better oversight of nuclear power plants. And an official at the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry shares the “sense of crisis,” says Murata. “Many ideas are sleeping. If a real task force is established, the Fukushima crisis will become more manageable.”
<snip>
Toni Feder
November 2013
The world-scale nuclear disaster needs to be addressed by worldwide expertise, critics say.
<snip>
“They have got it wrong from A to Z,” says Paris-based international energy consultant Mycle Schneider. “The wrong tanks [for storing contaminated water], the wrong materials, the wrong site preparation and monitoring. A big worry is that a new earthquake would destroy one or more tanks or a reactor building with its spent fuel pool and we’d get massive releases into the environment.” The most pressing issues are dealing with the contaminated water—400?000 tons and counting—and ensuring that the reactor cores and the 15?093 fuel-rod assemblies onsite are kept under water. A failure to cool the fuel could lead to a buildup of decay heat, spontaneous combustion of the fuel cladding, and uncontrolled release of radioactivity.
The six boiling water reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant all suffered structural damage in the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami and the several reactor hydrogen explosions that followed. When backup generators flooded and failed, the cores of the three reactors that were working at the time melted through their primary containment vessels. Two and a half years later, some 400 tons of groundwater becomes contaminated daily as it flows into the site; pumping it out expands the onsite storage farm, currently around 1000 tanks, by two tanks every five days. And tons of radioactive water leaks into the Pacific Ocean each day. The government now admits this, says Mitsuhei Murata, a former ambassador to Switzerland. “And there is no immediate solution in sight.”
<snip>
The physical and technical complexities are exacerbated by the management of the remediation, which so far has been TEPCO’s responsibility, and by the breakdown of public trust in TEPCO and the government. In his research, Aldrich found that public trust in the government and national authorities plummeted from 85% in 2010 to 8% some three months after the March 2011 disaster. The distrust is the “biggest problem,” says Schneider. He and others note that it’s unrealistic to expect TEPCO, a utility company, to have the know-how to deal with a nuclear accident.
<snip>
“The nuclear accident cannot be solved by a single state or company,” says Murata. “If the world does not learn the lessons of Fukushima, this tragedy will take place again.” Still, he points to a few positive developments. The formation last year of the Nuclear Regulation Authority as a separate government body may lead to better oversight of nuclear power plants. And an official at the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry shares the “sense of crisis,” says Murata. “Many ideas are sleeping. If a real task force is established, the Fukushima crisis will become more manageable.”
<snip>
Much more at: http://scitation.aip.org/content/aip/magazine/physicstoday/article/66/11/10.1063/PT.3.2173;jsessionid=6nm6an32e9ibt.x-aip-live-02
4 replies
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