• pub­lished: 21 Sep 2013
• views: 2464

Im­por­tant up­date today. Parts in­clude the fol­low­ing: (death in 20 sec­onds with waste) TEPCO's water pu­rifi­ca­tion plan faces dif­fi­cul­ties The op­er­a­tor of the dam­aged Fukushi­ma Dai­ichi nu­cle­ar plant says it will pu­ri­fy all the ra­dioac­tive water at the site by March 2015. But ob­servers say that won't be easy. Tokyo Elec­tric Power Com­pa­ny said Thurs­day there's a total of 440,000 tons of con­tam­i­nat­ed water in the base­ment of the tur­bine build­ings and in stor­age tanks. The util­i­ty says there's an­oth­er 15,000 tons in tun­nels under the com­pound. Con­tain­ing the ra­dioac­tive water was the main issue Prime Min­is­ter Shin­zo Abe dis­cussed with TEPCO on Thurs­day dur­ing his visit to the plant. The util­i­ty plans to in­stall 2 more water treat­ment de­vices in ad­di­tion to one now in place. But its trial run is cur­rent­ly on hold be­cause of dam­age caused by cor­ro­sion. One of the two ad­di­tion­al de­vices is a high per­for­mance model. TEPCO hopes the three de­vices will en­able it to treat 1,500 tons of water a day. That's 3 times the pre­sent rate. But the wa­ter-treat­ment de­vices can­not re­move tri­tium, a ra­dioac­tive iso­tope of hy­dro­gen. TEPCO also has a plan to re­lease clean ground­wa­ter into the ocean be­fore it is con­tam­i­nat­ed by the fa­cil­i­ties area. It will do that by form­ing a by­pass around the plant. But there are grow­ing fears that a leak of 300 tons of taint­ed water from a stor­age tank could be af­fect­ing the ground­wa­ter be­fore it reach­es the fa­cil­i­ty. Local fish­er­men are wor­ried this could fur­ther hurt Fukushi­ma's image and delay the restart of the local fish­ery. Ob­servers say TEPCO needs to come up with a cred­i­ble plan to deal with these prob­lems. ~~ New nu­cle­ar waste dis­pos­al plan pre­sent­ed to panel Japan's In­dus­try Min­istry has pro­posed a new way of dis­pos­ing of high­ly ra­dioac­tive nu­cle­ar waste that can be re­trieved, if need­ed, after it is buried un­der­ground. Min­istry of­fi­cials made the new pro­pos­al to its panel of ex­perts on Fri­day. They ex­plained ra­dioac­tive waste might need to be re­cov­ered from an un­der­ground stor­age if some­thing hap­pens that re­quires a re­view of the method, or if new tech­nol­o­gy to lower its tox­i­c­i­ty is de­vel­oped. The min­istry plans to bury high-lev­el ra­dioac­tive waste more than 300 me­ters un­der­ground, where it would re­main for tens of thou­sands of years. The min­istry has been con­sid­er­ing stor­age sites for 13 years, but the pro­cess had been stymied by strong pub­lic con­cern. The Sci­ence Coun­cil of Japan said last year that since Japan is prone to seis­mic and vol­canic ac­tiv­i­ty using cur­rent tech­nol­o­gy it is dif­fi­cult to de­ter­mine sites that will re­main sta­ble for tens of thou­sands of years. The min­istry began over­haul­ing plans in May this year. Min­istry of­fi­cials say a time limit can­not be placed on how long the new pro­pos­al will be dis­cussed. ~~ Inose: Taint­ed water not nec­es­sar­i­ly under con­trol Tokyo Gov­er­nor Naoki Inose says that the prob­lem of ra­dioac­tive water leak­ing from the crip­pled Fukushi­ma Dai­ichi nu­cle­ar plant isn't nec­es­sar­i­ly under con­trol. Ear­li­er this month, Prime Min­is­ter Shin­zo Abe de­clared at the gen­er­al as­sem­bly of the In­ter­na­tion­al Olympic Com­mit­tee in Buenos Aires that the sit­u­a­tion at Fukushi­ma is under con­trol. The IOC chose Tokyo as the host city for the 2020 sum­mer Olympics and Par­a­lympics. At a news con­fer­ence on Fri­day, Inose said the most im­por­tant thing is that Abe ex­pressed his de­ter­mi­na­tion to bring the sit­u­a­tion under con­trol. The gov­er­nor praised Abe for dis­pelling wide­ly spread spec­u­la­tion and con­cern about the leak­age prob­lem. Inose added that he ex­pects the cen­tral gov­ern­ment to do all it can to solve the prob­lem. ~~ Mote­gi: Scrap­ping 2 re­ac­tors helps Japan's in­dus­try min­is­ter says de­com­mis­sion­ing 2 un­dam­aged re­ac­tors at the trou­bled Fukushi­ma Dai­ichi plant would help ac­cel­er­ate scrap­ping of the fa­cil­i­ty's dam­aged re­ac­tors. Toshim­it­su Mote­gi was speak­ing on Fri­day a day after Prime Min­is­ter Shin­zo Abe asked the plant's op­er­a­tor to de­com­mis­sion the Num­ber 5 and 6 re­ac­tors. The 2 re­ac­tors, un­like the plant's other 4, re­mained in­tact after the 2011 mas­sive quake and tsuna­mi. But local mu­nic­i­pal­i­ties have been de­mand­ing that Tokyo Elec­tric Power Com­pa­ny scrap them. Mote­gi said de­com­mis­sion­ing the 2 would cre­ate space to build more tanks to store con­tam­i­nat­ed wastew­a­ter. He added that dur­ing the scrap­ping pro­cess, the op­er­a­tor could use the 2 re­ac­tors' fa­cil­i­ties to train its en­gi­neers. He said such train­ing is im­pos­si­ble at the dam­aged No. 1 to 4 re­ac­tors due to high ra­di­a­tion. ... He said the gov­ern­ment and the com­pa­ny will do their best to com­plete work to pu­ri­fy the water by the end of March 2015, with­out stick­ing to a sched­ule. ~~ More Fukushi­ma plant work­ers show health prob­lems (...) ran out of space(...) song by Jonathan Mann What's the worst that can hap­pen #1665 http://​youtu.​be/​I6-2P_​E34XY BONUS LINK: The only so­lu­tion to Fukushi­ma Dai­ichi Nu­cle­ar Dis­as­ter is un­speak­able http://​youtu.​be/​GnlcedAynkc