Government secretly backtracks on Fukushima decontamination goal
June 16 June 16, 2013
With the government facing difficulty in finding disposal sites, municipalities in Fukushima Prefecture are being unofficially notified that the goal for completion of radioactive decontamination work in March 2014 may not be met, sources said.
The government also informed municipalities that it will not allow decontamination work to be redone in areas where radiation levels have not declined even after decontamination efforts have been completed.
Those remarks apparently contradict the government’s official stance that it will accelerate decontamination efforts for areas impacted by the accident at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant following the March 11, 2011, Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami. Without a clear explanation, the government has begun to backtrack on its policies.
The government aims to lower radiation levels in areas to one millisievert or less a year. It plans to achieve that goal in all of the evacuation zones in 11 municipalities in the prefecture within this fiscal year, which ends in March 2014, by spending a total of 1.5 trillion yen (about $15 billion) by the end of the year.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe also said in March that the government will accelerate decontamination work and reconstruction activities.
However, the government is facing difficulties in securing sites to store waste contaminated with radioactive materials, due to local opposition. As a result, the government has yet to start decontamination work in five of the 11 municipalities where some or all residents were forced to evacuate due to high radiation levels.
Even in evacuation zones where the decontamination work has already begun, the progress rate of the work for houses was only 1 percent in Iitate village as of March.
In such circumstances, officials of five of the 11 municipalities said that they were told by the Environment Ministry in or after April that it would be difficult to achieve the goal within this fiscal year. Because of that, the town of Tomioka has begun to inform residents that the decontamination work will continue until the next fiscal year.
“The central government should officially admit the delay of the decontamination work and review the (decontamination) plans as early as possible,” said a Tomioka official in charge of the issue.
The ministry has also effectively rejected redoing decontamination efforts in areas where radiation levels have not declined. In a meeting with seven municipalities, held in May 27 to exchange opinions, the ministry told them, “As of now, we are not allowing the redoing of decontamination work.”
The stance is apparently contradictory to the government’s policy that redoing decontamination work could fall under the government’s fiscal measures to cover the costs. The policy was described in a document related to the government’s guidelines on decontamination work.
The contradiction is creating a backlash among municipalities because 25 municipalities have said that radiation levels have yet to decline to one millisievert in some of their areas even after decontamination work was completed.
As for decontamination plans, the Environment Ministry told The Asahi Shimbun that the policy of achieving the goal within this fiscal year is unchanged.
As for a second round of decontamination efforts, the ministry said that, currently, it has yet to target any areas. Therefore, that shows a priority being placed on areas where decontamination efforts have not been conducted at all.
“We cannot make drastic reviews until the July Upper House election,” said a high-ranking official of the ministry.
The decontamination work is apparently facing a slowdown. Though two years and three months have passed since the accident at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant, decontamination work has yet to start in many areas.
In addition, additional decontamination work is not being allowed, even if radiation levels do not decline as a result of decontamination efforts. Incidents of slipshod decontamination work have also been revealed. Citizens are also having growing doubts on the cost-benefit performance of the decontamination work.
Opinions of residents are mixed. Residents, especially elderly citizens who want to return to their houses as early as possible, are placing strong hopes on the decontamination work. Meanwhile, according to a survey conducted by the village of Iitate in June 2012, more than 40 percent of the respondents replied that they don’t expect to benefit from the decontamination efforts. In a Tomioka town survey, whose results were released in February this year, 40 percent of the respondents said that they have decided not to return to their houses.
Many of the affected people are also requesting assistance for their current livelihoods rather than decontamination efforts.
Unless the government shows a clear road map for the decontamination work, residents cannot make plans for their future.
Delay of decontamination work became obvious in March when progress rates of those efforts were compiled. However, Environment Minister Nobuteru Ishihara said in the Diet in May, “There are no changes in the government’s plans.”
On the surface, the government is saying that it will accelerate decontamination efforts. Behind the scenes, however, it is showing an opposite stance. That means that the government is abandoning its responsibilities.
The government needs to show realistic decontamination policies to the public and make efforts to obtain their support for them.
The Fukushima prefectural government has not recorded any cases in which a second round of decontamination work has been allowed.
In the village of Yugawa in the prefecture, decontamination work was completed in fiscal 2012, which ended in March 2013. On June 5, the village asked the ministry for a second round of efforts, fearing that radiation levels could rise again due to melting snow. However, the ministry rejected the request, saying, “In principle, we cannot do them.”
“The Environment Ministry’s attitude toward us has always been terrible. We are not surprised at such a rejection,” said an official of the village.
(This article was compiled from reports from Miki Aoki, Tamiyuki Kihara and Toshio Tada.)
THE ASAHI SHIMBUN
Fukushima nuclear plant: Toxic isotope found in groundwater
High levels of a toxic radioactive isotope have been found in groundwater at Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plant, its operator says.
Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) said tests showed strontium-90 was present at 30 times the legal rate.
The radioactive isotope tritium has also been detected at elevated levels.
The plant, crippled by the 2011 earthquake and tsunami, has recently seen a series of water leaks and power failures.
The tsunami knocked out cooling systems to the reactors, which melted down.
Water is now being pumped in to the reactors to cool them but this has left Tepco with the problem of how to safely store the contaminated water.
There have been several reports of leaks from storage tanks or pipes.
Sea samples
Strontium-90 is formed as a by-product of nuclear fission. Tests showed that levels of strontium in groundwater at the Fukushima plant had increased 100-fold since the end of last year, Toshihiko Fukuda, a Tepco official, told media.
Mr Fukuda said Tepco believed the elevated levels originated from a leak of contaminated water in April 2011 from one of the reactors.
“As it’s near where the leak from reactor number two happened and taking into account the situation at the time, we believe that water left over from that time is the highest possibility,” he said.
Tritium, used in glow-in-the-dark watches, was found at eight times the allowable level.
Mr Fukuda said that samples from the sea showed no rise in either substance and the company believed the groundwater was being contained by concrete foundations.
“When we look at the impact that is having on the ocean, the levels seem to be within past trends and so we don’t believe it’s having an effect.”
But the discovery is another set-back for Tepco’s plan to pump groundwater from the plant into the sea, correspondents say.
Nuclear chemist Michiaki Furukawa told Reuters news agency that Tepco should not release contaminated water into the ocean.
“They have to keep it somewhere so that it can’t escape outside the plant,” he said. “Tepco needs to carry out more regular testing in specific areas and disclose everything they find.”
The Fukushima power plant has faced a series of problems this year. Early this month, radioactive water was found leaking from a storage tank.
The plant also suffered three power failures in five weeks earlier this year. A leak of radioactive water from one of the plant’s underground storage pools was also detected in April. end quote
Lionel Penrose was a member of the MEDICAL RESEARCH COUNCIL (NUCLEAR RADIATION COMMITTEE) at the time of the atomic weapons test in Australia. At that time he is listed by the British Parliament as being “Professor L. S. Penrose, M.D., F.R.S., Galton Professor of Eugenics, University College, London.” See post
http://nuclearhistory.wordpress.com/2013/06/16/dave-whytes-hearing-date-approaches/
The contents of Ernest Rock Carling’s repugnant speech to the Atoms for Peace Conference in Geneva in 1955 includes the following statements: Quote:
Speaking at an atomic conference at Geneva, Sir Ernest Rock Carling, a Home Office pathologist, declared: “It is also to be hoped that, in a limited proportion of cases, these mutations (from nuclear radiation from atomic bomb test fallout) will have a favourable effect and produce a child of genius. At the risk of shocking this distinguished company, I affirm that the mutation that will give us an Aristotle, a Leonardo da Vinci, a Newton, a Pasteur, or an Einstein will largely compensate for the ninety nine others, which will have much less fortunate effects.” (cited by Pauwels and Bergier, “The Morning of the Magicians”, 1960)
As Lionel Penrose and Ernest Rock Carling served together on the MEDICAL RESEARCH COUNCIL (NUCLEAR RADIATION COMMITTEE).
Rock Carling’s speech is framed within the concepts of Eugenics, with a focus on mental retardation inflicted by bomb fallout being offset by the creation of individuals of genius by way of the same fallout (only to be seen as a social benefit if the unfortunate are not allowed to breed, in the manner of British Eugenics).
Penrose occupied the position of Galton Professor of Eugenics, University College, London. Penrose also had a very great interest in the conditions of mental retardation and mental illness. He studied the genetics of such conditions.
Ernest Rock Carling got his ideas from somewhere, and the prime suspect is the highly organised association of Eugenics which was a potent force throughout Britain and the Anglophile world at that time. However, the work of Penrose stands very much in opposition to the words of Ernest Rock Carling, and it is in fact that case that Penrose would have found the contents of Rock Carling’s 1955 Geneva utterly offensive.
This is made plain by a brief reading of the life of Lionel Penrose, as follows:
Genetics journal
December 1, 1998 vol. 150 no. 4 1333-1340
Lionel Sharples Penrose, 1898-1972: A Personal Memoir in Celebration of the Centenary of His Birth by Renata Laxova
“After the war, Penrose was appointed to the Galton Chair of Eugenics and to the directorship of the Galton Laboratory at University College, London. The professional pedigree of the chair was auspicious. Established by Francis Galton in 1911, it was first occupied by Karl Pearson until 1933, when he was succeeded by R. A. Fisher, who held it until 1943. At that time J. B. S. Haldane, who had been head of the Department of Biometry since 1935, became the head of a united department of Biometry and Eugenics, with Penrose in the Galton Chair from 1945 until his retirement in 1965 at age 67. In 1957, when Haldane moved to India, Penrose became the head of a department called Eugenics, Biometry, and Genetics. He hated the word Eugenics and the philosophies with which it had become synonymous. He said it was “irksome” to be the head of a department of Eugenics and to edit a journal with Eugenics in its title without ever studying or writing a word about eugenics! But it was not until 1954 that he succeeded in officially changing the title of the journal he edited from Annals of Eugenics to Annals of Human Genetics, and it was only in 1963 that his chair finally became the Galton Professorship of Human Genetics. “
“During the Galton Laboratory years, Penrose’s overriding interest was the study of patients with mental retardation. He “adopted” one of the large residential institutions for the mentally retarded, Harperbury Hospital, which was located northwest of London in what was then quite seriously called London’s “lunatic fringe,” now the “green belt.” Such institutions were situated in all four directions from the center of London, hence the horrifying term. Harperbury had 1600-1800 residents, two-thirds of whom were male, and it was always Penrose’s dream to be located in their midst so that he could study and evaluate them in individual detail. “
“Issues of social and ethical importance were never far from Penrose’s thoughts. Using sound mathematical reasoning, he rarely missed an opportunity for debate with his enthusiastic, eugenically minded peers about their erroneous conceptions of the proliferation of the poor, the mentally ill, and the retarded (e.g., Penrose 1963b). He also studied crowd behavior and mass hysteria, mostly in connection with the Russian Revolution of 1917 or pre- and “peri”-war Nazi Germany. He summarized his ideas in a monograph entitled, characteristically, On the Objective Study of Crowd Behavior (Penrose 1952). Later, he published a leaflet, Hazards of Nuclear Tests, urging Britain, which he described as a “country aspiring to greatness,” to seize the moment and benefit humankind by abandoning its military demonstration of atomic power. In the 1930s he and Margaret had been instrumental in cofounding the Medical Association for the Prevention of War, in which both were active for the rest of their lives.”
My initial horror at seeing an academic Chair of Eugenics associated, in the same British Nucelar Radiation Committee occupied by Ernest Rock Carling did overcome me at first. One can imagine Rock Carling coniving with the occupant of such a Chair to concoct the 1955 speech.
However, this is a grave and ignorant error. The Eugenics movement was indeed very entrenched in the ruling class of Britain at the time, and for many years after. Anglophile countries are still not entirely over it. In the Australia the enforced administration of Depo-Provera by authorities against females deemed unsuitable for breeding was wide spread and the practice continued until recently.
“Depo-Provera is a branded progestogen-only contraceptive, depot medroxyprogesterone acetate (DMPA) long acting reversible hormonal contraceptive birth control drug that is injected every 3 months. It is an aqueous suspension for depot injection of the pregnane 17α-hydroxyprogesterone-derivative progestin medroxyprogesterone acetate.”
There are dangerous side effects to the substance. It’s use in institutions without consent by authorities became controversial in Australia some years ago.
Ernest Rock Carlings comments of 1955 make horrific sense logic on the setting of Eugenics which had as a central tenant the fostering of the breeding of those deemed to be the genetic “elite” and the discouraging of the breeding of the less than perfect.
In the light of the information that records the nature of Lionel Penrose, as a person who challenged the English Eugenics movement – as he did – being ready for a more than vigorous argument with Rock Carling on that man’s return from Geneva in 1955.
Exactly what is recorded in the archives of the British Nuclear Radiation Committee of Penrose’s contributions to the proceedings is not known by myself. I would like very much to find out.
The idea of a British radiation committee being permitted to include a dissenting member such as Penrose is utterly alien to me as an Australian. Here, the Atomic Weapons Test Safety Committee deliberately excluded such people by order of the British.
There is a warning in the story of Lionel Penrose.
In the modern world still, what passes casually as “genetics” may still feed into and encourage those who pursue the ideology known as Eugenics. At one point in history one did most deliberately feed the other. And within cloisters this may still be the case. Even in Australia.
“The widespread, popular and eugenic belief that such measures as enforced sterilization could effectively constrain the supposed greater fecundity of mental defectives and problem families to prevent an overall decline in national intelligence, is an instance of what Hogben found extremely contentious. In any case, he claimed, as already mentioned, that the influence of bad heredity could not be correctly assessed where enormous disparities in social conditions still persisted. The medical policy of eugenic selection by enforced sterilization was first implemented in 1907, in Indiana, ‘to prevent procreation of confirmed criminals, idiots, imbeciles and rapists’, and by 1913 such sterilization had been legalized in 12 US States. Between 1907 and the 1970s more than 60 000 people had been sterilized under laws, upheld by the US Supreme Court in 1927, which had been drafted by doctors and were still valid in 19 States in 1985. These US laws were used as models for legislation in Denmark and Switzerland (1928), Germany (1933), Norway and Sweden (1934), and Finland (1935), and were neither social democrat nor Nazi in origin. It was the medical geneticist, Lionel Penrose, emphasizing Mendelian genetics, who particularly argued that inherited characters are genes and not characters, so that the scope of practical eugenics was extremely limited.” Lancelot Hogben, FRS (1895-1975) By Milo Keynes
http://www.galtoninstitute.org.uk/Newsletters/GINL0203/Lancelot_Hogben.htm
In Australia, institutionalised Aboriginal females were a common target of enforced administration Depo Provea. The Australian Aboriginal Nation held the groups and individuals most affected by Britain’s nuclear testing regime. This nuclear testing resulted in the final dispossession of the Aboriginal Nation from the land.
Only at the start of the 21st century was the process of putting this situation right partially completed. However, the individuals medically affected by the nuclear tests continue to have to fight for justice.
The Australian and British governments continue to contest just claims and continue to deny any role in this matter as it applies to the children of nuclear victims, including the children of nuclear test participants.
Meanwhile nuclear lobbyists continue present the idea that nuclear pollution is beneficial it’s impact upon the human genome. Such lobbyists merely echo the words of Sir Ernest Rock Carling. The myth of the superior mutant, that most unlikely event, rests in fact upon the real and tragic costs borne by parents and children by way of nuclear insult to the integrity of the chromosome.
There is a nuclear elite. However, it is enabled by laws, not genetics. Such laws are unjust. Such laws allow the careless polluters to escape justice.
Further information on the work of Lionel Penrose.
Papers of Lionel Sharples Penrose, 1806-1974, comprising personal papers relating to Penrose and his family, 1806-1974; papers relating to the professional training, medical, scientific and voluntary work of Penrose, 1918-1972; and letters, mainly to Penrose, 1915-1973.
2
PENROSE/2
Work-Related Material
1918-1972
Papers relating to the professional training, medical, scientific and voluntary work of Lionel Sharples Penrose.
Consists of: papers relating to the study of mental disease and crime; papers relating to work for peace, war as a disease and the pathology of crowd behaviour; papers relating to problems in mathematical statistics, including statistics of elections; statistics in psychiatry and biology; reviews and obituaries by Penrose; administrative papers and correspondence relating to institutions where Penrose worked; notes, typescripts, letters and other papers about automatic mechanical self-replication; papers relating to John Burdon Sanderson Haldane; notes and other papers for lectures, broadcasts and talks; papers on psychoanalysis; papers relating to Penrose’s work at Cardiff City Mental Hospital, including letters from patients and case notes; papers relating to Penrose’s work at the Royal Eastern Counties’ Institution, Colchester, including reports, papers in connection with Mental defect (London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1933), reviews of The influence of heredity on disease (London: H K Lewis & Co, 1934), the Colchester Survey: a clinical and genetic study of 1280 cases of mental defect; papers for work on Down’s syndrome; papers relating to pyloric stenosis; papers on sex incidence in mental disease and genetic sex-linkage; papers relating to genetic problems in obstetrics; papers on tests to classify and discriminate between normal and psychotic subjects; notes on shock therapy; papers about familial psychosis; data on Huntington’s chorea; papers relating to biochemical genetics; papers on genetics and paediatrics; work on the measurement of “fitness”; papers on heterosis and genetic equilibrium; lecture notes and other papers on eugenics; papers relating to the Royal Commission on the law relating to mental illness and mental deficiency; papers and letters on the genetical effects of radiation; papers relating to age, mutation and mental defect; lecture notes on consciousness, time and evolution; typescript papers relating to genetics and medicine, and genetics and psychotic reactions; typescripts for the CIBA foundation symposia, 1957-1965; letters and papers about central nervous system malformations; working papers, notes and letters for a lecture, talk and article on the “porcupine” man; papers relating to dermatoglyphics, the study of the lines forming skin patterns especially on the palms of hands and soles of feet; papers relating to the link between chromosomal anomalies and dermatoglyphic patterns; papers about a new treatment for leukaemia; papers on genetics and human infertility; papers about prosthetics for the mentally handicapped; notebooks on intrafamilial correlations; notes about the limits to growth; notes on amniocentesis and typescript on “Clinical research in subnormality”, 1972; list of Penrose’s scientific publications for the period 1925-1971; analysis of words in a 16th century manuscript and other notes on a variety of subjects which include gene combinations, chess problems, head measurements, mathematics without variables, Chinese and Japanese characters, and patterns; and some reprints of papers written by others.
35
PENROSE/2/35
Genetical Effects of Radiation
1940-1960
Consists of:
Offprints, including Penrose’s Hazards of Nuclear Tests.
Press cuttings on the International Conference on the peaceful uses of Atomic Energy.
Material relating to lectures on the effect of radiation damage in man.
Papers, minutes of meetings and reports connected with Penrose’s work on the Genetical Society’s Committee on the Genetical Effects of Radiation, and the Medical Research Council’s Committee on the Medical Aspects of Nuclear Radiation.
Reports, notes and minutes in connection with committees investigating the long-term effects of radiation damage in man.
Correspondence relating to committees, broadcasts and reports on the long-term genetic effects of radiation and atomic bomb explosions on human populations.
4
PENROSE/2/35/4
Papers of the Medical Research Council Committee on the Medical Aspects of Nuclear Radiation
1952-1958
Contains memoranda, agendas, minutes, offprints, and draft reports circulated to members of the Medical Research Council Committee on the Medical Aspects of Nuclear Radiation. The Committee was sub-divided into two further sections; the Panel on Individual Effects, and the Panel on Genetic Effects, who met separately to discuss circulated papers.
See Record View
Title List of Invitees to Committee on the Medical Aspects of Nuclear Radiation
Date1 1955
StorageSite
UCL Special Collections
University College London Archives.
The oxygen is a widely known variable which determines the effectiveness of a radiation dose. Normally named Oxygen tension, it is seen as a factor active at the level of the cell.
However, in 1946 Hersey reported in his book that Hiroshima doctors had observed a variable response
determined by the state of activity or state of rest of the victims.
He described also the protective effect of burns in relation to radiation sickness.
These factors demonstrate that the prediction of the effects of radiation are not based upon measured external dose alone, but upon other, individually variable factors. These factors have in fact been known for
many years, though nuclear authorities rarely discuss them in public in relation to nuclear disasters.
The following is taken from “HIROSHIMA” by John Hersey
First published in the NEW YORKER, August, 1946
Published in Penguin Books
November 1946
Made and printed in Great Britain
for Penguin Books Ltd. by C. Nicholls and Co. Ltd.
“As the symptoms revealed themselves, it became
clear that many of them resembled the effects of over-
doses of X-ray, and the doctors based their therapy
on that likeness. They gave victims liver extract,
blood transfusions, and vitamins, especially B.
The shortage of supplies and instruments hampered them.
Allied doctors who came in after the surrender found
plasma and penicillin very effective.
Since the blood disorders were, in the long run, the predominant
factor in the disease, some of the Japanese doctors
evolved a theory as to the seat of the delayed sickness.
They thought that perhaps gamma rays, entering the
body at the time of the explosion, made the phos-
phorus in the victims’ bones radio-active, and that
they in turn emitted beta particles, which, though they
could not penetrate far through flesh, could enter the
bone marrow, where blood is manufactured, and
gradually tear it down.
Whatever its source, the disease had some baffling quirks.
Not all the patients exhibited all the main symptoms.
People who suffered flash burns were protected,
to a considerable extent, from radiation sickness.
Those who had lain quietly
for days or even hours after the bombing were much
less liable to get sick than those who had been active.
Grey hair seldom fell out. And, as if nature were
protecting man against his own ingenuity, the repro-
ductive processes were affected for a time ; men became
sterile, women had miscarriages, menstruation stopped. “
Familiar faces win ¥1.6 billion in nuclear public relations projects after Fukushima disaster
Asahi Shimbun 17 June 2013
By SATOSHI OTANI/ Staff Writer
Nearly 70 percent of government spending to regain public trust in nuclear energy has landed at organizations that employ retired bureaucrats or former executives of electric power companies, The Asahi Shimbun has found.
In the two fiscal years after the accident at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, the industry ministry awarded 49 contracts and the science ministry provided 18 for various projects worth 2.48 billion yen ($26.2 million) to publicize and educate the public on nuclear energy.
Ten organizations with either retired bureaucrats or executives of utilities won 33 of those projects worth 1.63 billion yen, or 66 percent of the total. The remaining projects were contracted out to advertising companies, according to documents.
The funds used in the projects come from taxes that are included in monthly electric bills.
The budget to promote nuclear energy was cut to about half of the level before the Fukushima nuclear disaster amid concerns about additional accidents and criticism against government officials who had touted the safety of nuclear energy.
The ministries’ remaining programs were tailored to regain public trust by providing information on nuclear energy policy and promoting an understanding of radiation.
The cozy ties between politicians, bureaucrats, regulators and businesses in the “nuclear village’’ were also attacked for promoting collusion. One target of criticism was “amakudari,” the practice in which retired ministry officials gain employment at companies and organizations that are overseen by those ministries.
Officials from the industry and science ministries said the hiring practices of organizations did not influence the bidding process for the projects.
“The presence of retired bureaucrats is not a standard for deciding on contract winners, and there is nothing arbitrary about the selection process,” said an official with the Nuclear Fuel Cycle Industry Division within the Agency for Natural Resources and Energy under the industry ministry.
However, a number of the contracts were won by default–there were no other bidders.
The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry spent 1.48 billion yen in its public relations program for nuclear energy in fiscal 2011 and 2012. The program is mainly directed at citizens and municipalities hosting nuclear power plants, and much of the expenses were used to arrange lectures by nuclear energy scientists and provide workshops related to radioactive waste.
The Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology used 1 billion yen in its program to support education on nuclear energy over the same period. The projects included the leasing of radiation detection equipment, seminars on radiation targeting teachers, and advertisements in newspapers and on TV.
Documents obtained from the two ministries showed that 34 private-sector companies as well as foundations and other organizations won contracts over those two years.
Six contract winners were employing retired bureaucrats from the two ministries as directors. And three of them–the Japan Science Foundation, the Radioactive Waste Management Funding and Research Center and the Tsukuba Expo ’85 Memorial Foundation–had retired bureaucrats on the payroll as full-time executives.
Those three organizations were the only ones that revealed the pay of their executives. Full-time directors had annual salaries of about 16 million yen.
Four other contract-winning organizations had retired or current executives of electric power companies serving as directors or auditors.
Contracts are normally won in an open bidding process. But almost all of the public relations projects were awarded based on the commissioning body’s appraisal of the bid proposal and technical skills.
Only one bid was placed for 10 of the 33 contracts won by the 10 organizations. The average winning bid was 96.8 percent of the predetermined maximum amount of the contract.
Before the Fukushima nuclear accident, between 2 billion and 3 billion yen a year was spent on public relations projects for nuclear power.
But after the triple meltdowns at the plant, those projects came under fire for spreading the false “safety myth” about nuclear power generation.
The two ministries scrapped some public relations projects that had been regular fixtures, such as poster contests and advertisements in in-flight and women’s magazines.
“After the Fukushima nuclear accident, we conducted projects to meet the needs of the public in learning about radiation,” said an official with the Atomic Energy Division of the science ministry. “Bidding is conducted based on established regulations, and we do not give priority to those organizations with retired bureaucrats.”
However, one project in Hokkaido had a double involvement with retired officials.
In Horonobe in northern Hokkaido, a facility designed to educate the public about burying radioactive waste within an artificial barrier was built next to a larger center operated by the Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA).
Construction on the facility started in fiscal 2008, and 910 million yen had been spent on the project by fiscal 2012.
The facility opened in April 2010 and will be completed this fiscal year.
Experiments at the facility are conducted jointly by the JAEA and the Radioactive Waste Management Funding and Research Center.
The research center has won contracts to build and manage the facility year after year because it has been the sole bidder.
But since there are no center employees at the Horonobe facility, the actual management work has been subcontracted to Tokyo-based Pesco Co.
Three former high-ranking officials of JAEA now work for Pesco, including the company president.
New Statesman The eugenics movement Britain wants to forget
In the first of a three-part series to mark disability history month, Victoria Brignell looks back
Britain and America are two countries that, in recent years, have led the world in attempting to give disabled people rights and equality. During his presidency, George Bush Senior was proud to sign the Americans with Disabilities Act while the 1995 Disability Discrimination Act has gradually transformed the lives of disabled people in the UK. It may appear on the surface that the UK and USA have nothing in common with Nazi Germany, a regime that is estimated to have killed 200,000 disabled people and forcibly sterilised twice that number.
However, there is a dark side to the history of the two partners in the “special relationship” that has quietly been forgotten and swept under the carpet. It is a history that is deeply uncomfortable, disturbing and shameful and which seems to contradict the values America and Britain claim to uphold. This makes it even more vital that light is shone upon this history. Even if it is painful to do so, the past must be confronted and acknowledged.
This story begins 150 years ago. In 1859 Charles Darwin published his groundbreaking book Origin of Species which expounded his theory of evolution by natural selection. It wasn’t long before scientists and political theorists began to apply Darwin’s theory to human beings. With the spread of ideas about “the survival of the fittest”, social Darwinists started to question the wisdom of providing care to the “weak” on the grounds this would enable people to live and reproduce who were not meant to survive. They feared that offering medical treatment and social services to disabled people would undermine the natural struggle for existence and lead to the degeneration of the human race.
Such views took hold not only in Germany but also particularly strongly in America and Britain. The existence of disabled people was increasingly seen in the UK and USA as a threat to social progress. Darwin himself wrote in his 1871 treatise, The Descent of Man, “We civilised men…. do our utmost to check the process of elimination; we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed and the sick.. .Thus the weak members of society propagate their kind.”
It was a British man, not a German, who first came up with the term eugenics in 1883. Francis Galton was a cousin of Charles Darwin and he became obsessed with Origin of Species, especially its chapter on the breeding of domestic animals. This inspired him to spend much of his life studying the variations in human ability. He wrote: “The question was then forced upon me. Could not the race of men be similarly improved? Could not the undesirables be got rid of and the desirables multiplied?”.
Galton was convinced a person’s mental and physical abilities, like the plant and animal traits described by Darwin, were essentially inherited from one’s parents. He grew concerned that eminent British people were marrying late and having too few children. Galton wrote in his 1869 book Hereditary Genius: “Let us do what we can to encourage the multiplication of the races best fitted to invent, and conform to, a high and generous civilisation, and not, out of mistaken instinct of giving support to the weak, prevent the incoming of strong and hearty individuals.”
Galton argued that early marriage between healthy, mentally strong families should be encouraged by financial incentives, and reproduction by the “feeble-minded” should be curtailed. In his mind, superior mental and physical capabilities were advantageous not only to an individual but essential for the well-being of society as a whole. To try to spread his ideas, he even wrote a novel Kantsaywhere, about a society ruled by a Eugenic College that followed a eugenic religion designed to breed fitter, more intelligent humans. Galton’s views were not regarded as eccentric or offensive at the time. Far from it. In fact, he received many awards during his career. He
was made a fellow of the Royal Society in 1860 and was knighted shortly before he died.
Galton’s writings played a key role in launching the eugenics movement in the UK and America. Supporters of eugenics called for government policies to improve the biological quality of the human race through selective parenthood. They linked physical and learning disabilities to a range of social problems including crime, vagrancy, alcoholism, prostitution and unemployment. Eugenics quickly gained many backers on both sides of the Atlantic, including leading politicians and opinion formers.
It wasn’t just figures on the extreme right of politics who backed the eugenics philosophy. Some of British socialism’s most celebrated names were among the champions of eugenics – Sidney and Beatrice Webb (the founders of the Fabian Society), Harold Laski, John Maynard Keynes, even the New Statesman and the Manchester Guardian. They hoped that a eugenic approach could build up the strong section of the population and gradually remove the weak. In July 1931, the New Statesman asserted: “The legitimate claims of eugenics are not inherently incompatible with the outlook of the collectivist movement. On the contrary, they would be expected to find their most intransigent opponents amongst those who cling to the individualistic views of parenthood and family economics.”
Many early left-wing thinkers wanted government to direct social policy towards “improving” the human race by discouraging reproduction among those sections of society deemed to have undesirable genes. Supporters of state planning often found the idea of a planned genetic future attractive. As Adrian Wooldridge, author of Measuring the Mind: Education and Psychology in England 1860-1990, comments: “The Webbs supported eugenic planning just as fervently as town planning.” Beatrice Webb declared eugenics to be “the most important question of all” while her husband remarked that “no eugenicist can be a laissez-faire individualist”.
Similarly, George Bernard Shaw wrote: “The only fundamental and possible socialism is the socialisation of the selective breeding of man.” Bertrand Russell proposed that the state should issue colour-coded “procreation tickets” to prevent the gene pool of the elite being diluted by inferior human beings. Those who decided to have children with holders of a different-coloured ticket would be punished with a heavy fine. HG Wells praised eugenics as the first step towards the elimination of “detrimental types and characteristics” and the “fostering of desirable types” instead.
None other than William Beveridge, the architect of the post-1945 welfare state, was highly active in the eugenics movement and said that “those men who through general defects are unable to fill such a whole place in industry are to be recognized as unemployable. They must become the acknowledged dependents of the State… but with complete and permanent loss of all citizen rights – including not only the franchise but civil freedom and fatherhood”. A belief in eugenics was certainly not confined to the jackbooted far right.
As the end of the 19th century approached, eugenicists were becoming increasingly influential in British politics. A Royal Commission on the Blind, Deaf and Dumb concluded in 1889 that intermarriage between these groups was to be strongly discouraged. Its report was based upon advice from Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone, who had warned in his 1883 work Memoir upon the Formation of a Deaf Variety of the Human Race that the “passions of the deaf and dumb are undoubtedly strong”. In 1896 a pressure group entitled the National Association for the Care and Control of the Feeble Minded was set up in Britain to bring about the lifetime segregation of disabled people. Its campaigning reached its peak in the run-up to the 1910 general election.
Advocates of eugenics made significant advances during the Edwardian period. In 1907, the Eugenics Education Society was founded in Britain to campaign for sterilisation and marriage restrictions for the weak to prevent the degeneration of Britain’s population. A year later, Sir James Crichton-Brown, giving evidence before the 1908 Royal Commission on the Care and Control of the Feeble-Minded, recommended the compulsory sterilisation of those with learning disabilities and mental illness, describing them as “our social rubbish” which should be “swept up and garnered and utilised as far as possible”. He went on to complain, “We pay much attention to the breeding of our horses, our cattle, our dogs and poultry, even our flowers and vegetables; surely it’s not too much to ask that a little care be bestowed upon the breeding and rearing of our race”. Crichton-Brown was in distinguished company. In a memo to the prime minister in 1910, Winston Churchill cautioned, “The multiplication of the feeble-minded is a very terrible danger to the race”.
Britain and America are two countries that, in recent years, have led the world in attempting to give disabled people rights and equality. During his presidency, George Bush Senior was proud to sign the Americans with Disabilities Act while the 1995 Disability Discrimination Act has gradually transformed the lives of disabled people in the UK. It may appear on the surface that the UK and USA have nothing in common with Nazi Germany, a regime that is estimated to have killed 200,000 disabled people and forcibly sterilised twice that number.
However, there is a dark side to the history of the two partners in the “special relationship” that has quietly been forgotten and swept under the carpet. It is a history that is deeply uncomfortable, disturbing and shameful and which seems to contradict the values America and Britain claim to uphold. This makes it even more vital that light is shone upon this history. Even if it is painful to do so, the past must be confronted and acknowledged.
This story begins 150 years ago. In 1859 Charles Darwin published his groundbreaking book Origin of Species which expounded his theory of evolution by natural selection. It wasn’t long before scientists and political theorists began to apply Darwin’s theory to human beings. With the spread of ideas about “the survival of the fittest”, social Darwinists started to question the wisdom of providing care to the “weak” on the grounds this would enable people to live and reproduce who were not meant to survive. They feared that offering medical treatment and social services to disabled people would undermine the natural struggle for existence and lead to the degeneration of the human race.
Such views took hold not only in Germany but also particularly strongly in America and Britain. The existence of disabled people was increasingly seen in the UK and USA as a threat to social progress. Darwin himself wrote in his 1871 treatise, The Descent of Man, “We civilised men…. do our utmost to check the process of elimination; we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed and the sick.. .Thus the weak members of society propagate their kind.”
It was a British man, not a German, who first came up with the term eugenics in 1883. Francis Galton was a cousin of Charles Darwin and he became obsessed with Origin of Species, especially its chapter on the breeding of domestic animals. This inspired him to spend much of his life studying the variations in human ability. He wrote: “The question was then forced upon me. Could not the race of men be similarly improved? Could not the undesirables be got rid of and the desirables multiplied?”.
Galton was convinced a person’s mental and physical abilities, like the plant and animal traits described by Darwin, were essentially inherited from one’s parents. He grew concerned that eminent British people were marrying late and having too few children. Galton wrote in his 1869 book Hereditary Genius: “Let us do what we can to encourage the multiplication of the races best fitted to invent, and conform to, a high and generous civilisation, and not, out of mistaken instinct of giving support to the weak, prevent the incoming of strong and hearty individuals.”
Galton argued that early marriage between healthy, mentally strong families should be encouraged by financial incentives, and reproduction by the “feeble-minded” should be curtailed. In his mind, superior mental and physical capabilities were advantageous not only to an individual but essential for the well-being of society as a whole. To try to spread his ideas, he even wrote a novel Kantsaywhere, about a society ruled by a Eugenic College that followed a eugenic religion designed to breed fitter, more intelligent humans. Galton’s views were not regarded as eccentric or offensive at the time. Far from it. In fact, he received many awards during his career. He was made a fellow of the Royal Society in 1860 and was knighted shortly before he died.
Galton’s writings played a key role in launching the eugenics movement in the UK and America. Supporters of eugenics called for government policies to improve the biological quality of the human race through selective parenthood. They linked physical and learning disabilities to a range of social problems including crime, vagrancy, alcoholism, prostitution and unemployment. Eugenics quickly gained many backers on both sides of the Atlantic, including leading politicians and opinion formers.
It wasn’t just figures on the extreme right of politics who backed the eugenics philosophy. Some of British socialism’s most celebrated names were among the champions of eugenics – Sidney and Beatrice Webb (the founders of the Fabian Society), Harold Laski, John Maynard Keynes, even the New Statesman and the Manchester Guardian. They hoped that a eugenic approach could build up the strong section of the population and gradually remove the weak. In July 1931, the New Statesman asserted: “The legitimate claims of eugenics are not inherently incompatible with the outlook of the collectivist movement. On the contrary, they would be expected to find their most intransigent opponents amongst those who cling to the individualistic views of parenthood and family economics.”
Many early left-wing thinkers wanted government to direct social policy towards “improving” the human race by discouraging reproduction among those sections of society deemed to have undesirable genes. Supporters of state planning often found the idea of a planned genetic future attractive. As Adrian Wooldridge, author of Measuring the Mind: Education and Psychology in England 1860-1990, comments: “The Webbs supported eugenic planning just as fervently as town planning.” Beatrice Webb declared eugenics to be “the most important question of all” while her husband remarked that “no eugenicist can be a laissez-faire individualist”.
Similarly, George Bernard Shaw wrote: “The only fundamental and possible socialism is the socialisation of the selective breeding of man.” Bertrand Russell proposed that the state should issue colour-coded “procreation tickets” to prevent the gene pool of the elite being diluted by inferior human beings. Those who decided to have children with holders of a different-coloured ticket would be punished with a heavy fine. HG Wells praised eugenics as the first step towards the elimination of “detrimental types and characteristics” and the “fostering of desirable types” instead.
None other than William Beveridge, the architect of the post-1945 welfare state, was highly active in the eugenics movement and said that “those men who through general defects are unable to fill such a whole place in industry are to be recognized as unemployable. They must become the acknowledged dependents of the State… but with complete and permanent loss of all citizen rights – including not only the franchise but civil freedom and fatherhood”. A belief in eugenics was certainly not confined to the jackbooted far right.
As the end of the 19th century approached, eugenicists were becoming increasingly influential in British politics. A Royal Commission on the Blind, Deaf and Dumb concluded in 1889 that intermarriage between these groups was to be strongly discouraged. Its report was based upon advice from Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone, who had warned in his 1883 work Memoir upon the Formation of a Deaf Variety of the Human Race that the “passions of the deaf and dumb are undoubtedly strong”. In 1896 a pressure group entitled the National Association for the Care and Control of the Feeble Minded was set up in Britain to bring about the lifetime segregation of disabled people. Its campaigning reached its peak in the run-up to the 1910 general election.
Advocates of eugenics made significant advances during the Edwardian period. In 1907, the Eugenics Education Society was founded in Britain to campaign for sterilisation and marriage restrictions for the weak to prevent the degeneration of Britain’s population. A year later, Sir James Crichton-Brown, giving evidence before the 1908 Royal Commission on the Care and Control of the Feeble-Minded, recommended the compulsory sterilisation of those with learning disabilities and mental illness, describing them as “our social rubbish” which should be “swept up and garnered and utilised as far as possible”. He went on to complain, “We pay much attention to the breeding of our horses, our cattle, our dogs and poultry, even our flowers and vegetables; surely it’s not too much to ask that a little care be bestowed upon the breeding and rearing of our race”. Crichton-Brown was in distinguished company. In a memo to the prime minister in 1910, Winston Churchill cautioned, “The multiplication of the feeble-minded is a very terrible danger to the race”.
In 2012, athletes from around the world will assemble in London for the Paralympic Games, a global event which celebrates the talents and achievements of disabled people. However, a century earlier, in 1912, London was the setting for an international gathering with a very different and more sinister agenda – the first International Eugenics Conference. Organised by the British Eugenics Education Society and dedicated to Galton who had died the year before, 400 delegates attended including illustrious figures such as Winston Churchill (who was then First Lord of the Admiralty), Lord Balfour and a number of European ambassadors.
Charles Darwin’s son, Major Leonard Darwin, presided at the conference. In the run up to the First World War, he lobbied the British government to establish flying squads of scientists, with the power of arrest, who would travel around the country identifying the “unfit”. Those classified as such would be segregated in special colonies or sterilised.
The eugenics campaign continued to gain momentum in the interwar years. Membership of the British Eugenics Society reached its peak during the 1930s. The 1934 report of the Departmental Committee on Sterilisation chaired by Lord Brock recommended legislation to ensure the ‘voluntary’ sterilisation of ‘mentally defective women’.
Supporters of eugenics in Parliament included the Labour MP Will Crooks who described disabled people as “like human vermin” who “crawl about doing absolutely nothing, except polluting and corrupting everything they touch”. A bill for the compulsory sterilisation of certain categories of “mental patient” was proposed in Parliament in 1931 by Labour MP Archibald Church. He claimed it was necessary to stop the reproduction of those “who are in every way a burden to their parents, a misery to themselves and in my opinion a menace to the social life of the community”. Although such legislation was never actually passed in Britain, this did not prevent many sterilisations being carried out under various forms of coercion.
Eugenics still received backing in eminent circles in Britain until well into the 1940s. Leading economist John Maynard Keynes served on the governing council of the Eugenics Society and was its director from 1937 to 1944. Even in 1946, Keynes was calling eugenics “the most important and significant branch of sociology”. On the evening that the House of Commons debated the Beveridge Report, Beveridge himself spoke at a meeting of eugenicists at the Mansion House.
While a belief in eugenics is now largely a thing of the past, the values underpinning it have not gone away. Only 25 years ago, a British MP was prepared to publicly voice the view that a disabled child was an unnecessary drain on society’s resources. During a House of Commons debate on abortion in 1985, an MP asserted that to abort a “handicapped” foetus could save the country £1 million over the course of a lifetime.
In my next column, I will explore how America embraced the eugenics cause with even more keenness than Britain and the horrifying impact this had on disabled Americans.” end quote
Many thanks for your e-mail. A case conference is being held on the 8th July and will be dealing with 14 cases in total, three of whom are Widows living in Australia. I don’t know when the hearings will commence, perhaps we will get a better idea at the case conference.
The basis of my argument will be that the Authorities knew what they were doing and the genetic damage that would be caused, but they went ahead with the tests and compounded their crime by ordering Servicemen into highly radioactive areas whilst denying them access to protective clothing and respirators. Now they are denying Servicemen access to radiation records and cytogenetic blood tests.
I am a bit apprehensive and hope that I will be able to put my argument across. I am not as young, and quick witted as I once was. If the Judge has read my bundle of evidence I feel sure he will know what transpired during the nuclear tests.
I will keep you informed on what happens.
All the best
Dave.
It certainly is the case that they knew what they were doing. For example, Peter Alexander wrote a book called “Atomic Radiation and Life”. It was published by Pelican Books, London, 1957. It contains chapter entitled “The Sins of the Fathers”.
The book explains the variablity in sensivitiy to radiation based upon stage of mitsosis and upon cellular oxygen tension.
A great deal was known in the 1950s about the harms of radiation. After all it had been 30 years since Muller had demonstrated chromosomal damage at any dose.
At the time an Englishman by the name of Sir Ernest Rock Carling was the Chair of the ICRP.
In 1955 Carling told the Atoms for Peace Conference, Geneva the following:
Quote:
Speaking at an atomic conference at Geneva, Sir Ernest Rock Carling, a Home Office pathologist, declared: “It is also to be hoped that, in a limited proportion of cases, these mutations (from nuclear radiation from atomic bomb test fallout) will have a favourable effect and produce a child of genius. At the risk of shocking this distinguished company, I affirm that the mutation that will give us an Aristotle, a Leonardo da Vinci, a Newton, a Pasteur, or an Einstein will largely compensate for the ninety nine others, which will have much less fortunate effects.” (cited by Pauwels and Bergier, “The Morning of the Magicians”, 1960)
The statement caused a stormy debate in the British Parliament:
Quote:
(UK) OHMS HANSARD 1803–2005 → 1950s → 1955 → November 1955 → 15 November 1955 → Commons Sitting → MINISTRY OF WORKS
Atoms for Peace Conference, Geneva
HC Deb 15 November 1955 vol 546 cc173-4 173
§ 10. Mr. Mason
asked the Minister of Works how many papers were presented at the Geneva Atoms for Peace Conference by British scientists and Government advisers; their titles; who presented them; and which were approved by Her Majesty’s Government.
§ Mr. Birch
The total number of British papers presented to the Conference was 99. I am placing in the Library a list of titles and authors of those papers which were read at the Conference. British scientists attended the Conference as individual experts, and they were not required to submit papers to Her Majesty’s Government for approval of the views expressed.
§ Mr. Mason
Could the Minister give an assurance that in the papers presented, particularly by people who have some responsibility to Her Majesty’s Government—for instance, Sir Ernest Rock Carling—no more theories are advanced as fantastically ridiculous as the one which he proposed?
§ Mr. Birch
Sir Ernest Rock Carling is not, of course, a member of a Government Department, and I have no need to answer for his views.
Back to Atomic Energy Authority (Uranium Supplies)
The Formation of the International Commission on Radiological Protection 1.4.2. Development into maturity
(10) Before the Second World War, the Committee (or Commission, as it was called from 1934) was not active between the ICRs, and met for just 1 day at the ICRs in Paris in 1931, Zu¨ rich in 1934, and Chicago in 1937.
(11) Lindell (1996a) noted that at the 1934 meeting in Zurich, the Commission was faced with undue pressures; the hosts insisted on four Swiss participants (out of a total of 11), and the German authorities replaced the Jewish German member with another person. In response to these pressures, the Commission decided on new rules in order to establish full control over its future membership.
(12) After the Second World War, the first post-war ICR convened in London in 1950. Just two of the members of IXRPC had survived the war, namely Lauriston Taylor and Rolf Sievert. Taylor was invited to revive and revise the Commission,
which was now given its present name: the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP). Sievert remained an active member,Sir Ernest Rock Carling (UK) was appointed as Chairman, and Taylor was Acting Secretary; after the ICR, Walter Binks (UK) took over as Scientific Secretary because of Taylor’s concurrent involvement with the sister organisation, ICRU.
(13) At the 1950 meeting, a new set of rules was drafted, quite similar to the present rules, for the work of ICRP and the selection of its members (ICRP, 1951), and six sub-committees were established on:
permissible dose for external radiation;
permissible dose for internal radiation;
protection against X rays generated at potentials up to 2 million volts;
protection against X rays above 2 million volts, and beta rays and gamma rays;
protection against heavy particles, including neutrons and protons; and
disposal of radioactive wastes and handling of radioisotopes.
Source: ICRP Publication 109, The History of ICRP and the Evolution of its Policies R.H. Clarke and J.Valentin
Invited by the Commission in October 2008
End quotes.
Sir Ernest Rock Carling served as Chair of the ICRP from 1950 to 1956. Sufficient a period of time to coincide with the atomic bombing of Australia by Great Britain and Sir Robert Menzies.
Chillingly, Dr Edward Teller responded in the style of Rock Carling in the course of his famous debate with Dr Linus Pauling:
Quote:
“We know enough about the mechanism of heredity to be sure that changes will be made in the germ plasm, just as Dr. Pauling has said, and many, very many, probably the great majority of these changes will be damaging. Yet without some changes, evolution would be impossible.”
end quote.Source: “Pauling vs Teller”, The Pauling Blog, http://paulingblog.wordpress.com/2008/03/25/pauling-vs-teller/
In 1955 the British nuclear tests had been underway for 3 years. It can be seen that the awareness of genetic and other damage caused by these tests was dismissed thoroughly by the British Parliament. The tests continued unabated to the ever lasting shame of the governments involved. The dismissal of the genetic hazards being unleashed upon the world by the British Paliamnet was based upon the very admission of these hazards, couched in the immoral terms of eugenics, made by the then Chair of the international body overtly charged with the setting of “radiological protection standards”. Covertly, it is now plain that these “standards” were nothing more than a permission to spread nuclear pollution over land, sea, air and the genome. Without “standards” such an affliction would remain illegal.
Indeed both Rock Carling and Teller stated most clearly that they expected a genetic impact and they cast this expectation within the value system held by the adherents of eugenics.
After the mothers and fathers afflicted by the bomb tests have had their days and decades in court Dave, the children will tragically follow.
Industry and government continue to cook up any countering theory they can to counter the entry of truth as full evidence into the law courts. Knowing full well the time taken for many harms to be exhibited, they place a statute of limitations on that evidence.
Nuclear industry continues to push what from them are cheaper and cheaper “standards”. Using whatever theories it deems fit.
MEDICAL RESEARCH COUNCIL (NUCLEAR RADIATION COMMITTEE)
HC Deb 04 May 1955 vol 540 cc145-6W 146W
§ Mr. Elliot
asked the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Works, as representing the Lord President of the Council, the membership of the committee appointed by the Medical Research Council to prepare a report on the medical aspects of nuclear radiation.
§ Mr. Bevins
The Committee is as follows:
Sir Harold Himsworth, K.C.B., M.D., F.R.C.P., F.R.S., Q.H.P., Secretary of the Medical Research Council (Chairman).
Sir Ernest Rock Carling, F.R.C.S., F.R.C.P., Consultant Adviser, Ministries of Health and Home Office (Civil Defence), and Member of the Health Policy Committee of the Atomic Energy Authority.
Sir John Cockcroft, K.C.B., C.B.E., F.R.S., Director, Atomic Energy Research Establishment.
Professor A. Haddow, M.D., D.Sc, Director, Chester Beatty Research Institute.
Dr. J. F. Loutit, D.M., Director, Medical Research Council Radiobiological Research Unit.
Professor K. Mather, D.Sc, F.R.S., Professor of Genetics, Birmingham University.
Professor W. V. Mayneord, D.Sc, Professor of Physics applied to Medicine, London University.
Professor P. B. Medawar, D.Sc, F.R.S., Professor of Zoology and Comparative Anatomy, University College, London.
Professor J. S. Mitchell, C.B.E., M.B., F.R.S., Professor of Radiotherapeutics, Cambridge University.
Professor L. S. Penrose, M.D., F.R.S., Galton Professor of Eugenics, University College, London.
Sir Edward Salisbury, C.B.E., D.Sc, F.R.S., Director, Royal Botanic Gardens.
Dr. F. G. Spear, M.D., Deputy Director, Strangeways Research Laboratory, Cambridge.
Professor J. R. Squire, M.D., F.R.C.P., Professor of Experimental Pathology, Birmingham University.
Professor C. H. Waddington, Sc.D., F.R.S., Professor of Animal Genetics, Edinburgh University.
Professor Sir Lionel Whitby, C.V.O., M.D., F.R.C.P., Regius Professor of Physic, Cambridge University.
Professor B. W. Windeyer, F.R.C.S., Professor of Radiology (Therapeutic), London University
“Eugenics is the bio-social movement which advocates practices to improve the genetic composition of a population, usually a human population.[2][3]
It is a social philosophy advocating the improvement of human hereditary traits through the promotion of higher reproduction of more desired people and traits, and reduced reproduction of less desired people and traits.[4]…….Today it is still regarded by some as a brutal movement which inflicted massive human rights violations on millions of people.[17] Some practices engaged in by people in the name of eugenics involving violations of privacy, violations of reproductive rights, attacks on reputation, violations of the right to life, to found a family, to freedom from discrimination are all today classified as violations of human rights.
The practice of negative racial aspects of eugenics, after World War II, fell within the definition of the new international crime of genocide, set out in the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.[18]
The Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union also proclaims “the prohibition of eugenic practices, in particular those aiming at selection of persons….The modern field and term were first formulated by Sir Francis Galton in 1883,[20] drawing on the recent work of his half-cousin Charles Darwin.[21][22] He wrote down many of his observations and conclusions in a book, Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development.
The origins of the concept began with certain interpretations of Mendelian inheritance, and the theories of August Weismann.[23]” end quote.
by: Rick Wallace, Tokyo correspondent
From: The Australian
June 13, 2013 12:00AM
(Note: I am not going to paste the whole article here: I am only pasting the article to the point where the assertions made are contradicted by official sources.)
THE operator of Japan’s stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant says the plant’s most dangerous feature – the spent fuel pool of reactor 4 – can withstand another massive quake even as it prepares to extract the volatile fuel rods.
The company used a tour of the plant for foreign journalists yesterday to highlight progress at the spent-fuel pool since the devastating earthquake and tsunami of March 2011. The company highlighted an almost completed steel cage designed to support a crane to be used in the extraction.
Plant boss Takeshi Takahashi said the removal of the fuel rods – which posed a threat to Tokyo when they came close to being exposed to air during the crisis – would begin in November.
end of partial quote.
The official record of events at spent fuel pool No 4, particularly on the 15 March 2011, contradict the view obviously given to the authors of the above piece by TEPCO. The indications are very strong that on the 15th of March 2011, there was more than 1 fire in the spent fuel pool number four, that the radionuclide laden vapors and smoke was emitted to the open air, and that as a result, emergency measures where cranked up. People within a defined radius were told for the first time to stay indoors with doors and windows shut, the NRC and TEPCO argued over the level of water in the spent fuel pool, twice teams put out fires in the spent fuel pool four, the NRC records document the view that the pool was dry and also on the 15th, the IAEA released an emergency alert to member nations (see the following links to sources).
The following precise includes evidence which flatly contradicts the assertion made to journalists by TEPCO that “(the fuel rods)…which posed a threat to Tokyo when they came close to being exposed to air during the crisis”…. If one believes the NRC and IAEA then this is incorrect – the fuel rods were exposed. If one believes TEPCO, all was fine, and the statement is correct, there was always water covering all the rods and no overheating occurred.
If the statements by TEPCO, then, on 14 and 15 March 2011, there would have been no hydrogen generated by the fuel rods in pool 4 and no explosion and fire there. However, Japan Atomic Industry Forum at the links to the source documents below contradict these contentions by TECPO. As does the IAEA and the NRC in their responses to the events of the 15 March 2011.
It has been obvious since day 1 of the disaster that many statements issued by TEPCO and the rest of the global nuclear industry have been without any connection to reality and that the primary aim of many statements has been an attempt to look after stock holders rather than stake holders – such as the people of Japan and everyone else on the planet.
It was in response to these events that the then Prime Minister of Japan demanded that TEPCO staff save Japan, there was no option. The Fukushima 50 came be known by the world. A primary situation they confronted, and the situation which greatly contributed to the evacuation of other TEPCO staff, was in fact the situation at spent fuel pool 4. But this actually can only be seen by reading the reports relating to the actual situation in that spent fuel pool.
This is a bit of a long article. The issue is very important. I want to know what really went happened, and this is my best shot, as an ordinary joe, at gathering the evidence.
Repost:
The Japan Atomic Industry Forum at http://www.jaif.or.jp/english/fukushima/plantstatus201103.html provides links to its “Reactor Status and Major Events Update – NPPs in Fukushima (Estimated by JAIF) March 2011″. The earliest date provided being Update Number 2, Tuesday March 15 2011 at 10.30 hours.
This status update states that Reactor 4 is “safe”. This report notes the evacuation zone is 20 kms from the NPP.
Status update 3 of 13:00 hours 15 March 2011 states that the evacuation zone is “Evacuation Area 20km from NPS * People who live between 20km to 30km from the Fukushima #1NPS are to stay indoors.” Things had changed rapidly between 10.30 and 13.00 hours.
The update reports also states: “Remarks: Fire broke (out) on the 4th floor of the Unit-4 Reactor Building around 6AM and the radiation monitor readings increased outside of the building:
30mSv between Unit-2 and Unit-3, 400mSv beside Unit-3, 100mSv beside Unit-4 at 10:22. It is estimated that the spent fuels stored in the spent fuel pit heated and hydrogen was generated from these fuels, resulting in the explosion. TEPCO later announced the fire had been extinguished.
Other staff and workers than 50 TEPCO employees, who are engaged in water injection operation, have been evacuated.”
It can be seen that the order for people to stay indoors in the defined area occurred after the fire commenced. The view was that overheating fuel in spent fuel pools generated hydrogen resulting in the explosions. Of interest here is the explosion in reactor 4. Prior to the explosion, Reactor 4 building was intact. After the explosion it was not. The fuel overheated in spent fuel pool 4 and this is sufficient cause to generate hydrogen. This of course means that hydrogen generated within the spent fuel pool occurred regardless of events at reactor 3. The fuel rods in these two fuel pools was overheating and radiation levels outside both reactor buildings was high. JAIF ascribes this to the condition and environment of the spent fuel in both pools. However, it was number 4′s spent fuel pool which experienced fire.
Overheated fuel is damaged fuel. Such rods are below specification. The radioactive material within such rods is no longer sealed. Many fission products are reactive chemicals encased in reactive zircalloy. Some, such as cesium, have low melting points.
What was burning is not specified. However the fuel is implicated, it is described as overheating. The further implication is that fuel rods in the spent fuel pool of Reactor 4 were venting into the air. It is a logical progression from overheat, to explosion, to damaged containment and to the order for people within a defined zone to stay indoors. The boiling point of water is 212 degrees F. Overheating fuel rods have a temperature far in excess of 212 degrees F. Cesium melts at less than half the temperature of boiling water.
The JAIF accident update of 15 March 2011 states that for reactor 4: “SFP level low, Injecting Water SFP Temp. Increasing” The text is red flagged by JAIF.
The JAIF accident update of 16 March 2011 08:00 hours states in relation to reactor 4 : “SFP Level Low” red flagged text. The update further states :“Remarks A fire broke on the 4th floor of the Unit-4 Reactor Building around 6AM, Mar. 15, and the radiation monitor readings increased outside of the building: 30mSv between Unit-2 and Unit-3, 400mSv beside Unit-3, 100mSv beside Unit-4 at 10:22, Mar. 15. It is estimated that spent fuels stored in the spent fuel pit heated and hydrogen was generated from these fuels, resulting in explosion. TEPCO later announced the fire had been extinguished. Another fire was observed at 5:45, Mar. 16, and then disappeared later. Other staff and workers than fifty TEPCO employees who are engaged in water injection operation have been evacuated. ”
IN none of the reports is it concretely stated that fires were composed of burning of fuel rods. However, the clear conclusion gained from reading the reports is that regardless of what was burning, the fuel rods were overheating, measured radiation showed an increase and radically changed procedures for people in a defined area around the NPP ie people had to stay indoors. The conclusion reasonably drawn from this is that there was immediate danger off site to people within a defined area.
The biggest danger to nuclear industry comes when an event has an immediate effect on civilians in surrounding areas. Hence people were instructed to stay indoors. At this time, the possibility of severe consequences were being denied by world nuclear industry. However, the nature of the accident had obviously changed with the overheating of the fuel rods in the spent fuel pools. Further, while the first fire was claimed to be extinguished on the 15th March 2011 by TEPCO, another fire was reported as burning at 05:45 on March 16. It “disappeared later”.
In this article Kintisch states: ” Among the worst case scenarios at the Fukushima plant is that the spent nuclear fuel, which sits in essentially open cooling pools near the six nuclear reactors, could catch fire for a prolonged period and spew tons of radioactive dust in a radioactive plume. It appears some of the spent fuel has been on fire at reactor #4; fire occurs if the rods get hot enough to burn their cladding. Reports say that high levels of radioactivity have made it difficult to fight the fire, which appears to have continued to burn late Wednesday. Today, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) head Gregory Jaczko said that the pool at reactor #4 had run dry; Japanese authorities denied this. …”
If it were the fuel rod cladding which was burning then there may very well be grounds for considering that the overheating event in the fuel pool of reactor 4 had produced rapid oxidation (which may or may not produce what is normally considered to be a flame) in the fuel rod cladding. The salient point being the damage done to the integrity of the fuel rod cladding. For where the cladding fails, there is, in the absence of sufficient water in the spent fuel pool, a release of radioactive material results and where outer containment has failed, as occurred in reactor 4 resultant from the explosions there, the venting of fission and fuel products enters the outside air unimpeded.
It is easy to conclude therefore that people in a defined area around the NPP were ordered to stay indoors due to the emissions from the nuclear power plant’s number four spent fuel pool and the then fresh spent fuel rods stored there.
It is my view that rapidly oxidizing metals such as zircalloy may rapidly oxidize either with or without flame. The relevant factor being the integrity of the cladding. There was a crisis in the spent fuel pool four which did not “go away” when the flames did. It was present throughout. Hence the amended procedure for people outside the plant in a defined area to stay indoors.
Turning to the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC) we find this report:
Tuesday March 15, 2011, 18:10 hours. Headline “Explosion at No 4 Fukushima Reactor” MARK COLVIN: The Fukushima nuclear disaster has moved up the ladder from the third-worst civilian nuclear accident in history to the second, now behind only Chernobyl. With explosions at three of the plant’s reactors, and now a fire in spent fuel at reactor number four; it’s now a good deal worse than the 1979 Three Mile Island disaster.
The International Atomic Energy Agency says radiation levels around the plant are now 400 millisieverts an hour.
And the authorities are getting no help from the elements. Instead of blowing east and out to sea, as on most days, the smoke from the burning nuclear fuel is drifting south. About halfway to Tokyo at Utsunomiya, radiation is registering 33 times normal, still not a serious threat to health if things get better soon.
In the capital itself the level is less, 23 times normal. Earlier, the prime minister Naoto Kan briefly addressed the nation on television pleading for calm. …”
The Japanese people were, to my eyes, calm. It was the nuclear industry which was in panic.
However the report from the ABC defines what was “on fire”. It was the fuel rods. But ABC does not give a source for this information.
The damaged fuel rods were now free to vent into the open air.
How does the New York Times handle the situation? In my opinion, it does not define the fire, but it highlights the bravery of the personnel who attempted to control the disaster. It does not explain in any detail at all what they were actually doing. There is a blurring of events, as if everything that happened was due to the big reactor explosions which had previously occurred in units 1, 2 and 3. What was going on in reactor building 4 was not explained in any detail.
Here’s the New York Times of 16 March 2011. What does the piece define about the actual fuel pool venting and containment failure at reactor 4?
Last Defense at Troubled Reactors: 50 Japanese Workers
By KEITH BRADSHER and HIROKO TABUCHI
Published: March 15, 2011 New York Times.
“A small crew of technicians, braving radiation and fire, became the only people remaining at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station on Tuesday — and perhaps Japan’s last chance of preventing a broader nuclear catastrophe. …” The piece is about the people, not the fire. But it is the bravery demanded by the consequences of overheat which makes the story. The result of overheat in a fuel pool is radiation release where the containment building has failed. One can still appreciate the personnel while one seeks the technical details. Air crash investigations don’t stop work because the crew were brave on a doomed flight. Rather, the need to stop a repeat and further suffering and loss drives the quest for truth. The NYT in this article does not enlighten us at all as to what caused the need for such bravery, whether on site or in the homes of those forced to sealed themselves up indoors at that time.
In another article, the New York Times did provide information of great value. Information which few others, if any, provided at the same time.
On 5 April 2011, the New York Times published a piece which cited a confidential NRC report on the events at Fukushima Diiachi.
U.S. Sees Array of New Threats at Japan’s Nuclear Plant
By JAMES GLANZ and WILLIAM J. BROAD
Published: April 5, 2011 New York Times
“United States government engineers sent to help with the crisis in Japan are warning that the troubled nuclear plant there is facing a wide array of fresh threats that could persist indefinitely, and that in some cases are expected to increase as a result of the very measures being taken to keep the plant stable, according to a confidential assessment prepared by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. ….The document also suggests that fragments or particles of nuclear fuel from spent fuel pools above the reactors were blown “up to one mile from the units,” and that pieces of highly radioactive material fell between two units and had to be “bulldozed over,” presumably to protect workers at the site. The ejection of nuclear material, which may have occurred during one of the earlier hydrogen explosions, may indicate more extensive damage to the extremely radioactive pools than previously disclosed.”
The rapid oxidation of zirconium in air and water releases amounts of hydrogen which explodes with terrible force. This process was ongoing in spent fuel pool 4 and there is no need to invoke hydrogen from reactor 3 in this regard. The spent fuel pool was over heating as admitted by JAIF. Hydrogen was being generated by this process and this caused a hydrogen explosion in building 4 sufficient to destory the building and fling fuel rods many metres . Japan says the fuel rods were not exposed to air.
IAEA ENAC Data – March 15th – Reactor 4 Spent Fuel Pool Fire – Pages from ML12037A104 – FOIA PA-2011-0118, FOIA PA-2011-0119 & FOIA PA 2011-0120 – Resp 41 – Partial – Group DDD Part 2 of 3. (138 page(s), 1 24 2012)-6
(source link)
There are a number of people who maintain that there was no fire or fires in any of the spent fuel pools. The NRC maintained at the time that the spent fuel pool at reactor 4 was empty of water, dry. And thus it is clear in the NRC, the fuel rods were exposed to the open air. The Japanese authorities deny this. They maintain that despite the multiple reports and documented reports at that, of fires in the fuel pool, that there was water in the fuel pools. However, The Japan Atomic Industry Forum reports that the water level in that fuel pool was low and that the fuel rods in the pool were overheating. I bear in mind the basic process of “fire” in a reactive metal. It is rapid oxidation which may or may not be accompanied by a flame.
Spraying of water by hose commenced. This was done from outside the building – and was possible to do only because the containment building had been destroyed by hydrogen explosion. The building was too weak to do its job. The trigger for this aspect of the disaster was loss of ability to cool the water in the pool. And that was caused by earthquake.
There is little way of independently knowing when re occurrence of fuel rod overheating happens at the crippled plant. The potential remains for re occurrence. The older the rods become, the less dangerous they become. In 2011 the situation was dire. The fuel pools are not the only source of risk. There are the ongoing emissions from the molten fuel.
What was the response of the Japanese government to the fires in the spent fuel pool 4 in March 2011?
“4:20 p.m. Tuesday local Tokyo time, source: Associated Press:
High levels of radiation leaked from a crippled nuclear plant in tsunami-ravaged northeastern Japan after a third reactor was rocked by an explosion Tuesday and a fourth caught fire in a dramatic escalation of the 4-day-old catastrophe. The government warned 140,000 people nearby to stay indoors to avoid exposure.
Tokyo also reported slightly elevated radiation levels, but officials said the increase was too small to threaten the 39 million people in and around the capital, about 170 miles away.
12:30 p.m. Stars and Stripes reporter – Tim Wightman
Power plant reactor fire extinguished
TOKYO – Japan’s nuclear safety agency says a fire in a reactor at the Fukushima nuclear power plant in tsunami-ravaged northeastern Japan has been extinguished, The Associated Press is reporting. The fire broke out Tuesday at the nuclear plant, located in one of the provinces hardest-hit by last week’s massive earthquake and tsunami.
11:45 a.m. Stars and Stripes Reporter – Tim Wrightman
TOKYO – Japan Prime Minister Naoto Kan has told people living within 19 miles (30 kilometers) of the Fukushima Dai-ichi complex to stay indoors or risk getting radiation sickness, The Associated Press is reporting. Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said Tuesday that a fourth reactor at the Fukushima Dai-ichi complex was on fire and that more radiation was released.
Kan also warned that more leaks could occur.
10:55 a.m. Tuesday Stars and Stripes Reporter Tim Wrightman
TOKYO – The early Tuesday explosion at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant may have damaged a reactor’s container, leading Japan’s nuclear safety agency to suspect a radiation leak, The Associated Press is reporting.
According to agency spokesman Shigekazu Omukai, the nuclear core of Unit 2 of the plant was not damaged “in the explosion. But the agency suspects damage to the bottom of the container that surrounds the generator’s nuclear core, which could’ve caused radiation to escape.”
“Press Release (Mar 15,2011)
Damage to the Unit 4 Nuclear Reactor Building at Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power Station
At approximately 6:00am, a loud explosion was heard from within the
power station. Afterwards, it was confirmed that the 4th floor rooftop
area of the Unit 4 Nuclear Reactor Building had sustained damage.
After usage, fuel is stored in a pool designated for spent fuel.
Plant conditions as well as potential outside radiation effects are
currently under investigation.
TEPCO, along with other involved organizations, is doing its best to
contain the situation. Simultaneously, the surrounding environment is
being kept under constant surveillance. “
The report is a record of the findgins and reports of the IAEA and in relation to the fire, the IAEA states the following:
“A fire at Unit 4 occurred on 14 March 23:54 UTC and lasted two hours. The IAEA is seeking clarification on the nature and consequences of the fire.”
On the same day, in the midst of disagreement between the NRC and the Japanese authorities (in which NRC viewed with alarm the water level of the spent fuel pool 4), the IAEA issued its alert to member governments. The alert describes the fuel pool fire in spent fuel pool 4. This document is only known due to an FOIA release in the United States. The next day the IAEA Fukushima Nuclear Accident Update report for 16 March 2011 at
http://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/2011/fukushima160311.html
reported the following:
“Fukushima Nuclear Accident Update (16 March 2011, 22:00 UTC)
Temperature of Spent Fuel Pools at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant
Spent fuel that has been removed from a nuclear reactor generates intense heat and is typically stored in a water-filled spent fuel pool to cool it and provide protection from its radioactivity. Water in a spent fuel pool is continuously cooled to remove heat produced by spent fuel assemblies. According to IAEA experts, a typical spent fuel pool temperature is kept below 25 °C under normal operating conditions. The temperature of a spent fuel pool is maintained by constant cooling, which requires a constant power source.
Given the intense heat and radiation that spent fuel assemblies can generate, spent fuel pools must be constantly checked for water level and temperature. If fuel is no longer covered by water or temperatures reach a boiling point, fuel can become exposed and create a risk of radioactive release. The concern about the spent fuel pools at Fukushima Daiichi is that sources of power to cool the pools may have been compromised.
The IAEA can confirm the following information regarding the temperatures of the spent nuclear fuel pools at Units 4, 5 and 6 at Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant:
Unit 4
14 March, 10:08 UTC: 84 °C
15 March, 10:00 UTC: 84 °C 16 March, 05:00 UTC: no data”
The IAEA is continuing to seek further information about the water levels, temperature and condition of all spent fuel pool facilities at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.
IAEA Director General to Travel to Japan (16 March 2011, 18:50 UTC)
Director General Yukiya Amano announced the following today in Vienna:
“I plan to fly to Japan as soon as possible, hopefully tomorrow, to see the situation for myself and learn from our Japanese counterparts how best the IAEA can help. I will request that the Board of Governors meet upon my return to discuss the situation. My intention is that the first IAEA experts should leave for Japan as soon as possible.”
On 15 March, Japan asked the IAEA for assistance in the areas of environmental monitoring and the effects of radiation on human health, asking for IAEA teams of experts to be sent to Japan to assist local experts.
Given the fast-changing situation in Japan, the Director General was unable to announce the itinerary for his trip. He expects to be in Japan for a short amount of time and then return to Vienna.
Fukushima Nuclear Accident Update (16 March 2011, 14:55 UTC)
Japanese authorities have reported concerns about the condition of the spent nuclear fuel pool at Fukushima Daiichi Unit 3 and Unit 4. Japanese Defense Minister Toshimi Kitazawa announced Wednesday that Special Defence Forces helicopters planned to drop water onto Unit 3, and officials are also preparing to spray water into Unit 4 from ground positions, and possibly later into Unit 3. Some debris on the ground from the 14 March explosion at Unit 3 may need to be removed before the spraying can begin.
Fukushima Nuclear Accident Update (16 March 2011, 03:55 UTC)
Japanese authorities have informed the IAEA that a fire in the reactor building of Unit 4 of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant was visually observed at 20:45 UTC of 15 March. As of 21:15 UTC of the same day, the fire could no longer be observed.
Fire of 14 March
As previously reported, at 23:54 UTC of 14 March a fire had occurred at Unit 4. The fire lasted around two hours and was confirmed to be extinguished at 02:00 UTC of 15 March.” end quote.
But we need to keep in mind, fire or not, the fuel rods were at that time still overheating. And what, in relation to a reactive metal, does the word ‘fire’ actually mean? Rate of oxidation is related to temperature. A more important question is how much of the fuel rod inventory in spent fuel pool 4 was damaged and venting? Has it stopped venting since?
Autoignition Temperature: Solid metal will not ignite. High surface area material such as 10 micron powder may autoignite at room temperature. Fine chips, turnings, or grinding dust produced from this metal are flammable. Ignition point for powder varies from 200 oC to above 500 oC depending on particle size.
Minimum Explosible Concentration (g/m3): Less than 100. Varies with particle size.
Extinguishing Media: Dry table salt. Type D fire extinguisher. DO NOT USE water, carbon dioxide or halocarbon extinguishing agent.
Special Firefighting Procedures: If metal fines become ignited it is advisable to allow the material to burnout. Fire can be controlled by smothering with dry table salt or using Type D dry-powder fire extinguisher material. Wear reflective heat-resistant suit.
Unusual Fire & Explosion Hazard: Do not spray water on burning zirconium. Carbon dioxide is not effective in extinguishing burning zirconium.
If a fire starts in a mass of wet metal fines, the initial fire may be followed by an explosion. Therefore, when in doubt, personnel should retire and not attempt to extinguish the fire. The explosive characteristic of such material is caused by the steam and hydrogen generated within the burning mass.
Spontaneously combustible in dry powder form. Flammable and explosive as dust or powder, also in the form of borings and shavings. Zirconium metal is a very dangerous fire hazard in the form of dust when exposed to heat, flame or by chemical reaction with oxidizing agents. May be an explosion hazard in the form of dust by chemical reaction with air, alkali hydroxides, alkali metal chromates, dichromates, molybdates, sulfates, tungstates, borax, CCl4, copper oxide, lead, lead oxide, phosphorous, KClO3, KNO3, nitryl
fluoride. May be extremely sensitive to shock, and static electricity may cause spontaneous ignition.
Material Safety Data Sheet – Zirconium”
In relation to the behaviour of zircalloy in reactor applications, temperature determines its rate of reactivity, release of hydrogen and loss of structural integrity.
While zirconium can burn, the relevant outcome with overheat is release of fission product.
Reactor 4 and fuel pool containment after the events described above. The industry claimed for many months that the structure was sound. Steps are being attempted to shore it up.
A reader who wishes to remain unkown, has contributed the following information. He writes:
“I found this TV news report by Tim Maguire of Associated Press, which uses NHK footage with text superimposed in Japanese concerning Unit 4. The clip was uploaded to AP’s channel on YouTube, 15 March 2011,
“A new fire has broken out at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant one day after the facility admitted a burst of radiation that left the government struggling to contain the spiralling crisis.
“The latest blaze happened early Wednesday morning, local time, in the number 4 unit.
“The plant’s operator says the fire occurred in the outer housing of that unit’s containment vessel – but it’s not clear what caused the fire.
“Tuesday, a fire broke out in the same reactor’s fuel storage pond – that’s an area where used nuclear fuel is kept cool – and radioactivity was released into the atmosphere.
“Tokyo electric power said the new blaze erupted early Wednesday because the initial fire had not been fully extinguished, and firefighters were trying to put it out.” Associated Press.
And this last comment explains something which is pretty predictable given the nature of overheating zircalloy. Overheat means rapid oxidation. But it does not mean a flame is seen. The flame went out, the fuel rods continued over heating, and again a flame was seen. The period of no flame is not a period of safety. It is still a period of rapid oxidation,fuel rod damage and release of radioactive material.
This extended period of rod over heat in the fuel pool is described in Science Insider, as previously noted, here:
http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2011/03/contention-over-risk-of-fire-fro.html The salient fact is rod overheat, resultant damage and release of radiological material. Putting out the flames is not the same as cooling the rods. The overheating became serious on 15 March 2011. When did rod over heat and contents release stop? Has it stopped? Absence of flame is not absence of overheat.
“At approximately 06:00 JST on 15 March, an explosion damaged the 4th floor rooftop area of the Unit 4 reactor as well as part of the adjacent Unit 3.[12][13] The explosion is thought to be caused by the ignition of hydrogen that had accumulated near the spent fuel pond, the hydrogen was initially thought to have come from the stored fuel rods, but later, TEPCO believed the hydrogen came from Unit 3.[14] Later reports from the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission speculated that fuel could have been ejected from the Unit 4 spent fuel pond during this explosion.[15] Later on the morning of 15 March, at 09:40, the Unit 4 spent fuel pool caught fire, likely releasing radioactive contamination from the fuel stored there.[16][17] TEPCO said workers extinguished the fire by 12:00.[18][19] As radiation levels rose, some of the employees still at the plant were evacuated.[20] On the morning of 15 March, Secretary Edano announced that according to the TEPCO, radiation dose equivalent rates measured from the Unit 4 reached 100 mSv/h.[21][22] Edano said there was no continued release of “high radiation”.[23]
Japan’s nuclear safety agency NISA reported two holes, each 8 meters square, or 64 m² (690 sq ft), in a wall of the outer building of Unit 4 after the explosion.[24] At 17:48 it was reported that water in the spent fuel pool might be boiling.[25][26] By 21:13 on 15 March, radiation inside the Unit 4 control room prevented workers from staying there permanently.[27] Seventy staff remained at the plant, while 800 had been evacuated.[28] By 22:30, TEPCO was reportedly unable to pour water into the spent fuel pool.[4] By 22:50, the company was considering using helicopters to drop water,[28][29] but this was postponed because of concerns over safety and effectiveness, and the use of high-pressure fire hoses was considered instead.[30]
A fire was discovered at 05:45 JST on 16 March in the northwest corner of the reactor building by a worker taking batteries to the central control room of Unit 4.[31][32] This was reported to the authorities, but on further inspection at 06:15 no fire was found. Other reports stated that the fire was under control.[33] At 11:57, TEPCO released a photograph showing “a large portion of the building’s outer wall has collapsed”.[34] Technicians considered spraying boric acid on the building from a helicopter.[35][36]” The source links to the piece are interesting.
12. World Nuclear News. http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/RS_Attempts_to_refill_fuel_ponds_1703111.html
A major struggle took place today to maintain cooling of used nuclear fuel at Fukushima Daiichi 3 and 4. Helicopters made water drops and large fire trucks showered the buildings. Initial indications are that the effort was successful.
The explosion at unit 4 is thought to have been from a build-up of hydrogen in the area near the used nuclear fuel pond. It severely damaged the building, as well as that of adjacent unit 3, with which it shares a central control room.
Cooling pond temperatures
As reported by the International Atomic Energy Agency:
Unit 4
14 March, 10.08am GMT: 84 ˚C
15 March, 10.00am GMT: 84 ˚C
16 March, 05.00am GMT: no data
Unit 5
14 March, 10.08am GMT: 59.7 ˚C
15 March, 10.00am GMT: 60.4 ˚C
16 March, 05.00am GMT: 62.7 ˚C
Unit 6
14 March, 10.08am GMT: 58.0 ˚C
15 March, 10.00am GMT: 58.5 ˚C
16 March, 05.00am GMT: 60.0 ˚C
Neither the IAEA nor the Japan Atomic Industry Forum have data for units 1, 2 and 3.
Today the situation of the cooling ponds was the priority of authorities. Containing highly radioactive heat-generating nuclear fuel, they require an adequate level of water to be maintained as well as pumped circulation to control water temperature.
In the previous two days the temperature of unit 4′s pond had been 84ºC but no more recent data is available. At these temperatures cooling by natural convection begins to be markedly less effective. Normal operating levels are about 25ºC. There was no information on the temperature of the pond at unit 3.
However, the high levels of radiation and presence of hydrogen at unit 4 strongly indicate that fuel is uncovered and suffering damage in the pond, although it was not clear that the pond actually emptied. Officials were reassured the pond contained at least some water, based on helicopter observations.
13. ^ “Press Release: Damage to the Unit 4 Nuclear Reactor Building at Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power Station”. TEPCO. Retrieved 15 March 2011. “
Press Release (Mar 15,2011)
Damage to the Unit 4 Nuclear Reactor Building at Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power Station
At approximately 6:00am, a loud explosion was heard from within the
power station. Afterwards, it was confirmed that the 4th floor rooftop
area of the Unit 4 Nuclear Reactor Building had sustained damage.
After usage, fuel is stored in a pool designated for spent fuel.
Plant conditions as well as potential outside radiation effects are
currently under investigation.
TEPCO, along with other involved organizations, is doing its best to
contain the situation. Simultaneously, the surrounding environment is
being kept under constant surveillance. “
14. “TEPCO: Unit No.4 blast due to hydrogen from Unit No.3″. NHK. 16 May 2011. Retrieved 2 June 2011.[dead link]
(It can be seen that the date TEPCO’s change to its story was 16 May 2011. Prior to that change, Hydrogen generated by fuel rod cladding in the number 4 spent fuel pool had been the acknowledged source of the hydrogen.)
15. “Levels of radioactive iodine had reached 7.5 million times permissible levels directly behind the plant Saturday, but by Tuesday new measurements showed that the amount of radioiodine was only 4% of that amount. That was still nearly 300,000 times the permissible limit, but levels were continuing to decline as the outflow from the plant was being diluted by the ocean.
“IAEA Briefing on Fukushima Nuclear Accident (2 June 2011, 18:30 UTC)
Overall, the situation at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant remains very serious.
Fresh water is being injected as necessary into the spent fuel pools of Units 1 – 4. Water supply from concrete pump trucks is being gradually replaced by the Fuel Pool Cooling and Clean-up system in Units 1 to 3. However, closed loop cooling has not been yet established.
17. Reuters Japan spent fuel pond on fire,radioactivity out-IAEA
VIENNA, March 15 | Tue Mar 15, 2011 2:44am EDT
(Reuters) - Japan has told the U.N. nuclear watchdog a spent fuel storage pond was on fire at an earthquake-stricken reactor and radioactivity was being released “directly” into the atmosphere, the Vienna-based agency said.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), citing information it had received from Japanese authorities, said dose rates of up to 400 millisievert per hour have been reported at the Fukushima power plant site.
“The Japanese authorities are saying that there is a possibility that the fire was caused by a hydrogen explosion,” it said in a statement.
(Reporting by Fredrik Dahl; editing by Michael Roddy)
19 “World Nuclear News Update”. 15 March 2011.World Nuclear News
Fire at unit 4, concern for fuel ponds Prime minister Naoto Kan confirmed a fire burning at unit 4, which, according to all official sources, had never been a safety concern since the earthquake. This reactor was closed for periodic inspections when the earthquake and tsunami hit, therefore did not undergo a rapid and sudden shutdown. It was of course violently shaken and subject to the tsunami.
Kan’s spokesman Noriyuki Shikata said that there had been “a sign of leakage” while firefighters were at work, “but we have found out the fuel is not causing the fire.” The fire is now reported extinguished.
The International Atomic Energy Agency did confirm that the fire had taken place in the used fuel storage pool. The Japan Atomic Industry Forum’s status report said the water was being supplied to make up for low levels.
Similar to the need to cool fuel in the reactor core, used fuel assemblies in cooling ponds require a covering of water to remove decay heat. The main differences being the amount of decay heat to be removed decreases exponentially with time and that fuel ponds are much less of an enclosed space than a reactor vessel. At the same time, ponds may contain several years of fuel.
JAIF reported that temperatures in the cooling ponds at units 5 and 6 are increasing, but the reason for this is not yet available.”
Researched and written
by World Nuclear News end quote.
Noriyuki Shikata might be correct, but how does he explain the overheating of the fuel and consequent Hydrogen release and radioactivity release from the damaged rods? That is the salient point. The release of sealed radiological material which must NEVER be unsealed and scattered over the nation and world.
20. “Radiation levels could damage health”. Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. 14 March 2011. Retrieved 15 March 2011.
21
^ “放射線、福島原発で４００ミリシーベルト＝「人体に影響及ぼす可能性」－官房長官”. jiji press (in Japanese). 15 March 2011. Retrieved 15 March 2011.More than one of |work= and |newspaper= specified
22. http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/03/14/japan.nuclear.reactors/index.html?hpt=T1 Radiation levels spike at Japanese nuclear plant
By the CNN Wire Staff
March 15, 2011 — Updated 0316 GMT (1116 HKT) Tokyo (CNN) — Japanese authorities trying to stave off meltdowns at an earthquake-damaged nuclear power plant reported more grim news Tuesday as radiation levels soared following another explosion at an overheating reactor.
The risk of further releases of radioactive material from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant remains “very high,” Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan said Tuesday. In addition to an explosion at the No. 2 reactor, the building housing the No. 4 unit — which had been shut down before Friday’s earthquake — was burning Tuesday morning, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano announced.
The plant’s owners, the Tokyo Electric Power Company, evacuated all but about 50 of their workers from the plant following Tuesday’s explosion at the No. 2 reactor. Radiation levels at the plant have increased to “levels that can impact human health,” Edano said — between 100 and 400 millisieverts, or as much as 160 times higher than the average dose of radiation a typical person receives from natural sources in a year.
Evacuations have already been ordered for anyone living within 20 kilometers (12.5 miles) of the plant, and Edano said anyone between 20 and 30 kilometers (between 12.5-18.6 miles) should remain indoors. At least 500 residents were believed to have remained within the 20-kilometer radius Monday evening, Edano said.
Asia-Pacific News
Government spokesman: No continued radiation from reactor 4
Mar 15, 2011, 8:07 GMT
Tokyo – Japanese government spokesman Yukio Edano said Tuesday there was no continued release of high radiation from reactor number 4 of the Fukushima nuclear power plant, where an explosion occurred earlier in the day. end quote. But the fuel rods in 4 continued to overheat and this statement came at the same time as the stay indoors with windows and doors shut order was in place, at the same time as IAEA was alerting member states.
24 http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/15/japan-nuclear-holes-idUSTFD00668920110315 Asia-Pacific News Government spokesman: No continued radiation from reactor 4 Mar 15, 2011, 8:07 GMT
TOKYO, March 15 | Tue Mar 15, 2011 5:30am EDT
(Reuters) – Japan’s nuclear safety agency said on Tuesday there were two holes of 8-metres square in a wall of the outer building of the quake-hit Fukushima Daiichi No.4 reactor after a blast in the morning. (Reporting by Taro Fuse; Edited by Edwina Gibbs) end quote. Severe loss of containment for fuel pool radiological emissions.
26 “Fukushima No. 4 reactor spent fuel pool may be boiling -Kyodo”. Reuters. 15 March 2011.
27 Fujioka, Chisa (11 March 2011). “Radiation hits dangerous levels at Japan plant control room”. Reuters. Retrieved 15 March 2011.
28 Yuasa, Shino (15 March 2011). “Japan to spray water and boric acid on stricken nuke plant”. ajc.com. Retrieved 7 April 2011.
29 “Nuclear officials may spray Japanese power plant with water by helicopter”. Fox News. Associated Press. 7 April 2010. Retrieved 15 March 2011.
30 “Workers evacuated from Japanese nuclear reactor”. North Country Public Radio. Retrieved 18 March 2011.
31 “Press release: Fire occurrence at Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station Unit 4 (2nd release)”. TEPCO. Retrieved 18 March 2011.
32 “Fire breaks out again at Fukushima’s No. 4 reactor”. Kyodo News. 16 March 2011. Retrieved 15 March 2011. dead link
37 ^ JAIF (26 June 2012) Earthequake report 452: Tilted walls found at Fukushima No.4 reactor
Tokyo Electric Power Company has announced the No. 4 reactor at Fukushima
Daiichi nuclear plant has tilted walls caused by a hydrogen explosion in March
last year.
The building still contains large stockpiles of nuclear fuel. But the plant operator
TEPCO says its quake resistance is not affected.
TEPCO first found the tilted walls last month. A further investigation found the
damage in various parts of the structure’s west and south side.
The most extreme tilt was on the 3rd floor, where the wall was found to be
leaning 4.6 centimeters.
Spokesmen said the tilts are all within legal limits, and the walls’ strength
satisfies standards, too.
The building’s spent fuel pool stores more than 1,500 nuclear fuel rods, the
largest number among the Fukushima plant’s reactors.
But TEPCO stresses that building is safe, as the tilts were found in outer walls.
The pool itself is supported by pillars and other structures.
Jun. 25, 2012 – Updated 21:28 UTC (06:28 JST)
end quote. Though many nuclear experts poo poo’d the idea of strucutural instability, when I asked one engineer, who runs a nuclear industry blog, whether he thought the spent fuel pool was in good nick he said no it was not. I wouldnt licence it for continued use. What lunatic would?
38 “No water in spent fuel pool at Japanese plant: U.S.”. CTV News. 16 March 2011.
Earlier, a U.S. official said all of the water is gone from one of the spent fuel rod pools at the plant, meaning there is nothing to stop the fuel rods from getting hotter and eventually melting down, but Japan denied the claim.
“There is no water in the spent fuel pool and we believe that radiation levels are extremely high, which could possibly impact the ability to take corrective measures,” chief of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Gregory Jaczko said at a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee hearing Wednesday.
The outer shell of the rods could also explode with enough force to propel radioactive fuel over a wide area, if Jaczko is correct.
He said the problem is at the complex’s Unit 4 reactor.
Jaczko did not say how the information was obtained but the organization and the U.S. Department of Energy have experts on the site.
The U.S. is also calling on Americans in Japan to stay at least 80 kilometres away from the plant. Japan’s official evacuation zone is only about 20 km.
Japanese nuclear officials and Tokyo Electric Power Co., which operates the facility, have denied water is gone from the pool.
39 “Japan nuclear crisis: Meltdown at Fukushima Daiichi plant may now be inevitable”. New York Daily News. 17 March 2011.
40 Sanger, David E.; Wald, Matthew L.; Tabuchi, Hiroko (17 March 2011). “U.S. calls radiation ‘extremely high,’ sees Japan nuclear crisis worsening”. The New York Times.
45 Ralph Vartabedian; Barbara Demick; Laura King (18 March 2011). “U.S. nuclear officials suspect Japanese plant has a dire breach”. Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 18 March 2011.
By Ralph Vartabedian, Barbara Demick and Laura King, Los Angeles Times
March 18, 2011, 1:50 a.m.
Reporting from Los Angeles, Kesennuma and Tokyo—
U.S. government nuclear experts believe a spent fuel pool at Japan’s crippled Fukushima reactor complex has a breach in the wall or floor, a situation that creates a major obstacle to refilling the pool with cooling water and keeping dangerous levels of radiation from escaping.
That assessment by U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission officials is based on the sequence of events since the earthquake and information provided by key American contractors who were in the plant at the time, said government officials familiar with the evaluation. It was compelling evidence, they said, that the wall of the No. 4 reactor pool has a significant hole or crack.
46 Hiroko Tabuchi; Keith Bradsher (18 March 2011). “Frantic repairs go on at plant as Japan raises severity of crisis”. The New York Times. Retrieved 18 March 2011.
end quotes. Something happened in the spent fuel pool number 4. It resulted in a massive release of nuclear material as particulates from over heated and damaged fuel rods. Visible fires intermittently burst forth, to be put out. The lack of flame did not mean no overheat. Water was low or absent totally. The situation became very severe as a result. TEPCO evacuated all staff bar 50 or so and ordinary people were ordered to stay indoors. Meanwhile, nuclear “experts” claimed the situation was fine, that no material would fall out side the TEPCO site. Japanese government comments were very overly optimistic at times. The situation lent itself to confused reports. There is no argument though that the Japanese government was shattered to the extent that all trust in the nuclear industry to preserve Japan was lost. The Prime Minister visited the plant and the IAEA head shortly followed, saying all is well. At the time a Frenchman wearing a hazmat suit was arrested in Tokyo. The same city which had in fact been rained upon by radionuclides from the fuel pool stock.
Zircalloy is not the only reactive metal present in nuclear fuel rods. At least one of the fission products is a highly reactive metal also.
End repost.
It is plain that the issue of the events in and around Spent fuel pool 4 on the 14 and 14 March 2011 are very important. Either there was cause for grave concern due to damaged fuel rods venting directly to the open air or there was not. If not, nothing had changed from the 13th. So why suddenly order people to stay sealed inside their houses in a rather large radius from the plant?
If this was all unnecessary, fine, The Australian might reasonably report that spent fuel pool number 4′s fuel rods had ALMOST vented radionuclides into the air – at great risk to Tokyo.
However, it seems to me that on the 15 March 2011 this is precisely what did happen.
The 15th of March 2011 will not be the day history forgets if I can help it.
Whatever the merits of my ability to source documents of high reliability in order to learn what happened to the spent fuel in pool 4, whatever the merits of my conclusions based on the information contained in those documents, I can say, well, I haven’t given up my day job.
For journalists, whose job it is to do a proper investigation before putting pen to paper to swallow untested assertions which are in fact self serving statements which would be dismissed by a law court, is pathetic.
They get paid apparently to adverise the corporate view when the evidence calls in the question many aspects of that view. How many fires in spent fuel pool 4 was there from the 14 March 2011 to the 15 March 2011 Mr Murdoch? How were the fires put out? Why were people told, on that day, for the first time, to stay indoors with their doors shut? Why did the IAEA issue the emegerncy alert? Was the fuel pool dry or not? What were the actual radiological consequences for Tokyo and elsewhere?
On the 15 March 2011 within the defined radius of some kilometres, it was considered to be too dangerous to be outside of a sealed building, for fear of immediate consequences. Check Edano’s TV statements of that day Mr Murdocu and tell your hacks to pull their fingers out. And earn their pay in this matter for once.
Weekend Edition June 14-16, 2013
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Hot Tuna?
The Fish of Fukushima
by JOHN LaFORGE
On June 4th, 2013, London-based news source the Guardian reported, “Fukushima tuna safe to eat – study.” The day before, the Los Angeles Times reported, “Scientists to eaters: Don’t freak out over Fukushima fish.” The San Diego Union-Tribune was emphatic: “Tuna Pose No Risk after Nuke Disaster,” and online, “Fukushima seafood radiation risk nil, study says.” The BBC ran with, “Fukushima tuna pose little health risk.” And CNN declared, “Fukushima tuna study finds minuscule health risks.”
So which is it? Does that sushi or canned tuna pose a minuscule risk, just a little one, or is it safe? The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences published a report online May 30, 2013 that garnered these vastly disparate headlines. The NAS team studied measurements of cesium-137 and cesium-134 in Bluefin tuna caught off the California coast. The cesium was dumped or leaked as liquids into and deposited as gaseous fallout on the Pacific Ocean from Fukushima’s three catastrophic reactor meltdowns. The poisoned tuna swam 5,000 miles to our West Coast.
It is clear from the report that the Union-Tribune and the Guardian grossly “mis-headlined” the NAS’s findings. The tuna had an estimated 7.7 nano-sieverts [the sievert is a standard measure of the biological impacts of radiation] per 7-ounce serving. Since no radiation exposure of any kind is “safe,” headlines writers declaring the risk is “nil” and the tuna “safe” had not done the slightest bit of digging.
A simple internet search of agency web sites illustrates the fact that every US government agency that regulates radiation exposures, including the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the Energy, Transportation and Health and Human Services Departments and the National Academy of Sciences itself, agrees that there is “no safe dose.” The National Council on Radiation Protection says, “[E]very increment of radiation exposure produces an incremental increase in the risk of cancer.” In addition to noting that “radiation is a carcinogen,” the American Nuclear Society warns, “It may also cause other adverse health effects, including genetic defects in the children of exposed parents or mental retardation in the children of mothers exposed during pregnancy.”
The headline writers seem not even to have read the contents of their own stories, since the Union-Tribune report says, “the amount doesn’t represent a significant health risk.” Translating this low risk message into none at all or one that’s “nil” is extremely misleading and negligent at best. In the middle of the Guardian article, Nicholas Fisher, the lead US author of the study from Stony Brook University in New York says not that the tuna is safe, but that, “I wouldn’t necessarily encourage them to eat these fish — they can eat something else!”
The BBC article said a person eating a 200-gram meal of tuna would receive a radiation “dose equivalent” from cesium of less than eight nano-sieverts. “This is about a thousand times less than the dose someone would receive from a typical dental X-ray.” This comparison and others made to jet airplane rides and the effects of cosmic rays are shockingly deceptive and bogus, like comparing apples to tire irons. This is because external, single-shot exposures like medical and dental X-rays do not lodge in internal tissues, as does ingested or inhaled cesium. Internal radiation emitters deliver a chronic, ongoing exposure and bombard surrounding tissues where they can smash apart DNA again and again. Think of the difference between warming yourself before a glowing wood fire, and popping a hot coal into your mouth.
The BBC went as far as to say that the 200g portion would produce a dose of “roughly five micro-sieverts, which carries an increased probability of developing a fatal cancer of about two in 10 million.” If everyone on earth eats that single lunch, the “nil” effect translates to 1,600 cancer deaths. It’s a limited to be sure, but it’s a powerful little nothing if you’re the one with the cancer.
Another significant fault of the lazy reporting is that radiation exposure effects women, children, infants and people with immune dysfunction far more seriously than “reference man,” the hypothetical 20 to 30 year old “Caucasian male” used in most radiation protection regulations, including those designed to protect the general public. Its use is scientifically outrageous since the vast majority of people fall outside the definition. Most news accounts also neglected to mention that radiation’s effects are cumulative and irreversible and that the poisoned tuna risk has to be considered in conjunction with medical X-rays, tracer isotopes in medicine, dental X-rays, whole-body airport X-ray scanners, high-dose medical CT scans, food irradiation and a hundred other incidental sources.
In northeast Japan, the sale of rockfish and greenling has been banned because of cesium contamination. Reuters said May 31, 2013 that while some fish there contain cesium levels allowed by the government (100 Bequerels-per-kilo or less), fish that live near the sea-floor, like cod, halibut and sole, often test for fantastic levels of cesium.
One Japanese fisherman, 80-year-old Shohei Yaoita, who opposes Japan’s plan to dump more cesium into the sea told Reuters something we all might recall: “They say it’s safe, but they had always told us that the nuclear power is safe too.”
John LaForge works for Nukewatch, a peace and environmental justice group in Wisconsin.
Evaluation of a transuranic component in reactor derived releases from Fukushima Dai-ichi to the marine environment
Candise L. Henry 1, Timothy C. Kenna2, Pere Masqué3, Núria Casacuberta3, Ken O. Buesseler4
1Department of Earth & Environmental Sciences of Columbia University, New York, NY, USA, clh2148@columbia.edu 2Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, Palisades, NY, USA, tkenna@LDEO.columbia.edu 3Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Bellaterra, Spain, pere.masque@uab.cat 4Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, USA, kbuesseler@whoi.edu
Abstract
The incident at Fukushima Dai-ichi on March 11, 2011 was the consequence of several events (earthquake, tsunami, equipment failures, etc.) and led to the release of radioactive contaminants into the atmosphere and ocean.
Although the specific details regarding the mechanism and/or the extent of radioactivity released to the environment are lacking, significant levels of fission/activation products such as 131I, 134Cs, and 137Cs have been measured in the vicinity of Fukushima.
As part of a research cruise in June, 2011 to study the problem, we received water samples collected between 30 and 600 km offshore. The main objective of our work is to determine the presence of/characterize a transuranic component in the reactor releases. Here we report results from Pu isotopic analysis of selected samples from the cruise. The Pu isotopic composition is diagnostic in resolving reactor-derived contamination from background levels associated with global fallout. Based on the relationship between the Fukushima derived Pu, 90Sr and 137Cs we estimate the total amount input to the study site from direct release.
Objectives
1. Determine whether or not there is a transuranic component in the reactor releases.
2. Characterize the isotopic composition (239Pu, 240Pu, and 237Np)
3. Quantify the amount of Pu relative to the other radionuclides released from Fukushima Dai-ichi.
Methods
• Samples collected for UAB Sr/Cs analysis (see map right) • Modified method of Waples, J.T., Orlandini, K.A. (2010) to
separate Pu and Np • Column fractions sent to LDEO for additional purification and
analysis of Pu-239, Pu-240, Np-237 by ICP-MS (modified after Kenna (2002)
Background – Pre Fukushima (2009 NE Pacific data)
• Primary source of Pu and 237Np to the environment is fallout from nuclear weapons tests 1950s 1960s
240 239 • Pu/ Pu atom ratio typically ~0.18
• Ratio is elevated in the Pacific (~0.22) as a result of input from Tests conducted in the Marshall Islands (early 1950s)
• Cs and Np typically conservative in seawater • Pu more particle reactive (subject to removal on particles)
Fig. 1 Comparison of water column distributions between the SAFe site (30°N/ 140°W) samples collected in 2009 (solid symbols) and GEOSECS Station GX-202 (33.6°N/ 139.34°W) measured in 1973 (open symbols). (A) dissolved 239,240Pu. The subsurface maximum observed in the upper water column in 1973 has decreased and moved to deeper waters and bottom water Pu concentrations have increased. This is related to vertical fluxes of Pu-bearing particles and subsequent re-mineralisation by biological activity as well as physical circulation processes. Enhanced 239+240Pu concentrations in deep bottom waters in the Pacific Ocean have been observed and this may be explained by rapid transport of Pu isotopes attached to large particles through the water column to deep ocean sediments and re-suspension by near-bottom currents. (B) 137Cs – A decrease in the 137Cs maximum is also evident, but no subsidence is observed. (C) 237Np distribution is similar to 137Cs but longer half-life and better detection limits provide more detail. There is some evidence of 237Np at depth.
Fig. 2 Map showing the sampling stations of KOK-1108 in relation to Fukushima (red star) and the Kuroshio Current.
Fig. 3 239,240Pu Activities and 240Pu/239Pu atom ratios for selected samples. Left panel shows surface data; lower panel shows depth profiles. The dashed line represents the 240Pu/239Pu average value for nuclear weapons tests. The measured 240Pu/239Pu data are mostly consistent with fallout from weapons testing (0.22 in the N. Pacific). A few values are significantly higher than the fallout value. 237Np data are unavailable for these samples.
Fig. 4 (A) 240Pu/239Pu vs. 90Sr activity. 4 (B) 240Pu/239Pu vs. 137Cs activity. Linear regression indicates a strong correlation between increasing levels of 90Sr and 137Cs and increases in the 240Pu/239Pu atom ratio.
Fig. 5. Estimates of Fukushima derived Pu (yellow bars) and global fallout (green bars) in (left panel) surface samples and (lower panel) depth profiles. The Fukushima derived Pu accounts for between 0 and 50% of the total Pu measured in our samples.
Fig. 6 (A) 137Cs and Fukushima derived 239,240Pu in seawater samples; suggestion of two relationships (Discrete releases?, fractionation of Pu from Cs?) (B) Water column 137Cs and Fukushima derived Pu inventories. The linear relationship (R2 = 0.96) allows us to use estimates of 137Cs in the direct releases to the ocean from Fukushima (~3.5 x 1015 Bq) to predict the amount of Pu released (~6 x 109 Bq 239,240Pu). This is approximately 0.00004% of the total 239,240Pu released to the environment from anthropogenic nuclear activities (e.g., weapons testing, intentional and accidental releases), which is estimated to be ~15 x 1015 Bq.
Pu end-member mixing calculations
Based on the measured 134Cs/137Cs activity ratio (~1) the average burn-up of the fuel rods can is estimated to be ~25 gigawatt-days/metric ton of uranium (GWD/MTU), which in turn corresponds to a 240Pu/239Pu atom ratio ~0.46 (R. Web, personal communication). Using this value as the Fukushima 240Pu/239Pu end-member and 0.22 as the global fallout 240Pu/239Pu end-member, we can estimate the relative contributions for each source using a simple two end-member mixing model (eq. 1). Subscripts m, GF, and F indicate the measured 240Pu/239Pu value and the global fallout and Fukushima end-member values, respectively.
CONCLUSIONS
1. Pu isotopic analysis provides evidence of input from a source that is enriched in 240Pu relative to fallout from nuclear weapons tests and consistent with being derived from a nuclear reactor.
2. Application of a two end-member mixing model indicates that Fukushima derived Pu ranges between 0-50% of the total Pu measured.
3. The relationship between 137Cs and Fukushima derived 239,240Pu water column inventories is linear, allowing the total Pu contained in the direct releases from Fukushima to be estimated at ~6GBq.
4. This is likely a lower limit as it does not account for Pu loss due to particle scavenging in the water column
end quote.
TEPCO and the Japanese government hid behind the historic deposition of Pu from nuclear weapons for 2 years following the nuclear disaster.
When the admission was made that Pu had been ejected from the reactors and had deposited many miles from the NPP, the Japanese government ceased any further public disclosure of Pu monitoring results.
In the weeks and months following the disaster, the Japanese government denied Greenpeace permission to conduct sea water radionuclide monitoring off the Fukushima Diiachi site.
In 2012 a US DOE decontamination sub contractor named David Chanin of David Chanin Consulting (http://chaninconsulting.com/index.php?resume). Among other things, Mr Chanin wrote that the radio Iodine monitoring data off shore from Fukushima Diiachi made no sense. If true, the data indicated the MACCS codes (computer code used in predictions of effects from nuclear accidents) were incorrect. As Mr Chanin’s skills were specific, he asked me to contact nuclear engineers who might be able to provide an explanation for the radio Iodine figures. Mr Chanin wrote that he authored the MACCS codes. Mr Chanin’s resume contains the same information.
Mr Chanin also wrote of his opinions regarding the treatment of people in affected areas of Japan by Japanese authorities. Mr Chanin voiced the opinion that given the apparent under estimation of the impact of various contamination pathways by Japanese authorities, in his opinion the events in Japan amounted to an experiment.
I passed Mr. Chanin’s request along to an engineer at Oak Ridge and to Dr Jacobs in Hiroshima at that time.
I conclude that there is great concern at the skilled and qualified level of the independent enterprise within the nuclear arena.
I also conclude that given the refusal of the Japanese government to grant permission for independent assessment in the early days following the disaster at Fukushima Diiachi, the observation that “specific details regarding the mechanism and/or the extent of radioactivity released to the environment are lacking” as reported by Henry et. al. above is not the least bit surprising and is the result of deliberate actions on the part of nuclear industry and government in Japan.
I would be happy to have my conclusions corrected by the Nuclear Industry if that industry can show proof that these conclusions are in error.
Are the MACCS codes in fact in error? Why was there such a discrepancy between the measured ratio of radio Iodine and radio Cesium Isotopes off the coast off Japan and that ratio predicted by the MACCS codes in 2012?
Perhaps Andrew Bolt would like to enlighten Mr Chanin, myself and the rest of the planet.
Andrew is after all the mouth piece of the industry in Australia.
