“There are still no plans to remove fuel rods from the other reactor buildings, that are much more damaged than these.”
Just roll your mind over the passage starting at about :34.
• “..rows of large tanks, where the contaminated waters used to cool the reactors are stored. Each container can hold up to 1000 tons of water, which gets filled up in just two and a half days. There are currently 930 of these tanks, and already 75 percent have been filled. Although the plant operators plan to increase capacity, by an additional 700 thousand tons, they’re also running out of space…”
It appears the clean up after the Fukushima nuclear accident will be a multigenerational project. Think of it like building a medieval cathedral in reverse. With Hazmat suits.
Move along. Everything under control. Wind turbines kill birds. Solar is too expensive. Have a nice day.
TOKYO — Like the persistent tapping of a desperate SOS message, the updates keep coming. Day after day, the operators of the wrecked Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant have been detailing their struggles to contain leaks of radioactive water. The leaks, power outages and other glitches have raised fears that the plant — devastated by a tsunami in March 2011 — could even start to break apart during a cleanup process expected to take years.
The situation has also attracted the attention of the International Atomic Energy Agency, which sent a team of experts to review the decommissioning effort last month. They warned Japan may need longer than the projected 40 years to clean up the site. A full report is expected to be released later this month.
The discovery of a greenling fish near a water intake for the power station in February that contained some 7,400 times the recommended safe limit of radioactive cesium only served to heighten concern.
There was also some reassuring news in February, when a report by the World Health Organization said Fukushima had caused “no discernible increase in health risks” outside Japan and “no observable increases in cancer above natural variation” in most of the country. But for the most affected areas, the report said the lifetime risks of various cancers were expected to increase.
For example, baby boys were predicted to have up to a 7 percent greater chance of getting leukemia in their lifetime and for baby girls the lifetime risk of breast cancer could be up to 6 percent higher than normal.
This all relates to the Fukushima plant site, and in fact largely just the reactors.
“Hot, Fragile” is unsupported, a statement of fear rather than information.
There ARE actually plans to remove fuel rods from all the spent fuel pools, and that process will be complete somewhere in the 5-10 year range. The much more difficult challenge is the removal of the melted fuel from inside reactors 1, 2 and 3. That has a timescale – which the IAEA have said may be optimistic – but because little is known at present about the state of that fuel, obviously there are no detailed plans. A key initial step is to create closed cooling loops.
The fuel-removal structure being built over reactor building 4, seen a couple of months ago in the video above, is nearing completion. http://www.youtube.com/user/fuku1live captures the webcam hour-by-hour at 20xspeed.
The Germans are decommissioning their Greifswald Nuclear Power Plant since 1995. They’re still not finished. The waste has to wait another 40 years before it can be prepared for final repository (which does still not exist – worldwide). The removal of that one nuclear power plant already costed the German taxpayer almost $4 bn. Estimated further costs: $2.5 bn.
We’re talking about a nuclear power station which had not had a catastrophic accident like the one in Fukushima.
Nuclear isn’t “cheap”. New nuclear is way more expensive than renewables. On top of that nuclear power leaves an with unpredictable poisonous legacy.
So you say… and yet… Greifswald decommissioning, five operating Soviet reactors, was finished last year, including upgrades for alternative industrial use of the site.
http://www.oecd-nea.org/rwm/wpdd/10/documents/11____Decomm_Story_Greifswald_____Rehs.pdf
Nuclear power collects and controls its waste products by design.
Sorry, That paper doesn’t support your claim.
Slide 19 projects completion in 2012, and the presentation is from November 2011. So it’s pretty well supported unless you have evidence to challenge it.
Your article from 2011 says they WILL BE decommissioned in 2012. This article from from Nuclear Engineering International last month says that decommissioning IS underway.
The question now is: Was this an intentional attempt to mislead peopel on your part Joffan?
The answer seems clear.
It’s probably just a matter of varying definitions of what constitutes the end of decommissioning. The reference in the NEI article is pretty shallow, unlike the very detailed document I gave, so a current detailed update would be welcome if you can find one.
THIS article
http://www.neimagazine.com/features/featuredecommissioning-in-germany/
+1
Not to forget. It’s the German taxpayer shouldering this particular subsidy for nuclear power.
Greifswald decommissioning will not be finished until 2045. The quick decommissioning plan has been stopped because it was too expensive.
I’d appreciate a reference that supports your claim if possible, thanks.
Oh i will try to dig it up. I did a bunch of internet searching on Greifswald before i wrote this post. And it is not all referenced but some of it is.
I have read a certain amount of analyses on price of nuclear power. Most of them do not include the costs for decommissioning and/or the costs for final repository of the nuclear waste. Some consider decommissioning costs as “negligible”, some exclude these cost because they were too far in the future.
The burden is clearly shifted to future generations of our civilisations.
I’m guessing those guys are wearing hazmat suits because they’ve made the value judgement that the plant is still hot and fragile.
… and sarcasm is a great engagement tool.
Hot as in radioactive, OK. Mildly. Suits and full-face dust masks are policy for the lower areas of the site, although workers arrive on-site in ordinary work clothes. Carbon-filter masks are now only required inside parts of buildings 1, 2 and 3, where there are some significantly radioactive zones.
Fragile?
“mildly” radioactive particles can become very concentrated in the food chain if released into the ocean. In addition, hot particles may emit radiation that cannot penetrate even a sheet of paper, but can be deadly if inhaled or ingested, where they can radiate cells directly.
As far as the structural integrity of the buildings, I’m no engineer, but that twisted hulk does not look like my idea of stability and strength.
Some isotopes – some elements, really – concentrate through the food chain and some don’t, also depending to some extent on the environment they are released into. Cesium, fortunately, doesn’t signifcantly concentrate in this way. Cattle eating cesium-contaminated grass don’t get nearly as radioactive as the grass, for example, let alone getting more so.
The hot particles story was a fiction to try to include scary plutonium in the drama.
The “twisted hulk” is the top floor of building #3. Tepco have just – in the last week – moved enough debris to cover the spent fuel pool and they can now safely begin clearing away that wreckage. The building underneath is reasonably secure and will be improved by cutting away that mess.
a cesium eating cow does not really constitute the kind of food chain that exists in the ocean, which is not even well understood, but the article makes clear that radioactivity levels in fish have been found to be quite high.
As to the structural integrity of twisted metal, maybe you’re right. No problem whatever. In a mere 40, (or is it 50?) years, it’ll all be taken care of.
No, right, the cow was just an example of non-concentration. The headline-high levels in fish were from those caught inside the plant breakwaters.
By this time next year, I would expect the top of reactor 3 to be as clear as reactor 4.
just for fun, a 3-minute compression of an hour of the webcam from yesterday, showing some of the site work – fuel removal structure going up on unit 4, on the right and closest, and some wreckage removal on unit 3 in the middle there. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTGuUW63iQ8
And the word “Mildly” is not relative, joffan? Two small questions for my long time friend Joffan, the nuclear apologist…
Do you scour the Internet daily for stories about nuclear energy in order to find and counter objections to its commercial use? Are you paid to do so? It sure appears so according to Google. Perhaps it’s just an avid hobby of yours
I follow Peter’s climate blog.
I’m not sure how well your ad hominem style plays here; responding to argument with accusations of “shill” is a pretty tired tactic. I have strong opinions on nuclear power that I like to share, for sure.
Current status of the evacuation zones, for anyone interested: http://www.meti.go.jp/english/earthquake/nuclear/roadmap/pdf/20130307_01.pdf
green = ok to live in
orange = ok to visit
pink = visit with permission only, use precautions
red = exclusion
…According to the oh so trustworthy Japanese government and or entrenched nuclear establishment…
The phrase “ok to live in” is ALSO relative, is it not? You are quick to use relativistic phrases, Joffan, yet are equally quick to criticize their use when it suit your argument. Is your hypocrisy also relative?
The Japanese government determines the zone status, so “according to them” is an empty qualification.
independent evaluations are forbidden by the Japanese government.
The last red zone (Futaba Town district) has now been classified, divided into mostly pink and some green on the coast. This zone includes Fukushima Daiichi.
http://www.meti.go.jp/english/earthquake/nuclear/roadmap/pdf/130507_assistance.pdf
How come there are green zones right up against red/pink ones? I wouldn’t want to live at that northern most tip of the western edge of Okuma Town, surrounded on both eastern and northern fronts by pink and red. I’d like to have a nice orange buffer zone between me and the pink/red stuff, but this might just be a function of the limitations of using a four-colored map.
Do they have a map that shows sampling sites and results? That might be a bit better than a four color approach.
I live near a ‘orange’ colored zone here in Los Angeles (maybe about 10 miles away): Santa Susana Field Laboratory run by the government and various corporations. There are still legislation and court trials continuing regarding how to clean up an area that was contaminated in 1959 during a partial meltdown of an experimental reactor which had no commercial concrete casing around it. Pretty much all the techs at the facility died of cancer.
————————————————————————————————-
From Wiki:
In October 2006, the Santa Susana Field Laboratory Advisory Panel, made up of independent scientists and researchers from around the United States, concluded that contamination at the facility resulted in between 0 and 1,800 cancer deaths (the average estimate was 300 deaths). The report also concluded that the SRE meltdown caused the release of more than 458 times the amount of radiation released by the Three Mile Island accident.[2]
————————————————————————————————-
From Wiki:
Throughout the years, approximately ten low-power nuclear reactors operated at SSFL, in addition to several “critical facilities”: a sodium burn pit in which sodium-coated objects were burned in an open pit; a plutonium fuel fabrication facility; a uranium carbide fuel fabrication facility; and the purportedly largest “Hot Lab” facility in the United States at the time.[citation needed] (A Hot Lab is a facility used for remotely cutting up irradiated nuclear fuel.) Irradiated nuclear fuel from other Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) and Department of Energy (DOE) facilities from around the country were shipped to SSFL to be decladded and examined.
The Hot Lab suffered a number of fires involving radioactive materials. For example, in 1957, a fire in the Hot Cell “got out of control and … massive contamination” resulted. (see: NAA-SR-1941, Sodium Graphite Reactor, Quarterly Progress Report, January–March 1957). In July, 1959, the site suffered a partial nuclear meltdown that has been named “the worst in U.S. history”, releasing an undisclosed amount of radiation, but thought to be much more than the Three Mile Island disaster in 1979.[21] Another radioactive fire occurred in 1971, involving combustible primary reactor coolant (NaK) contaminated with mixed fission products.[22][23]
At least four of the ten nuclear reactors suffered accidents. The AE6 reactor experienced a release of fission gases in March 1959, the SRE experienced a power excursion and partial meltdown in July 1959; the SNAP8ER in 1964 experienced damage to 80% of its fuel; and the SNAP8DR in 1969 experienced similar damage to one-third of its fuel.[24]
The reactors located on the grounds of SSFL were considered experimental, and therefore had no containment structures. Reactors and highly radioactive components were housed without the large concrete domes that surround modern power reactors.
There are loads of sampling results on line from the relevant government departments (MEXT and METI).
I’d also noticed the green/pink transition in a few places (the red is irrelevant, effectively no classification yet). My guess on those locations is that one county/area was keen to make an accurate classification, but the other wasn’t bothered so they let it slide as pink. Motivation probably “are there any settlements here?”.
“Pretty much all the techs at the facility died of cancer” sounds like one of those throw-away phrases that, when you dig into it, proves to be all speculation and exaggeration.
Sorry, I was remembering a kill rate from last time i read about the area. The reference I was using was a Wiki reference to an article in the Ventura County Star which interviewed a worker, James Palmer, who worked at the sodium burn pit at the facility, which had both chemical and radioactive contamination. 22 out of 27 men on Palmer’s crew died of cancer.
Thanks for the additional detail – which as you must realize is a different claim.
The sodium burn pit wasn’t intended for or deliberately used with radioactive material. Lots of other nasty stuff is generated in fast combustion reactions.
The detection fallacy is widespread. Simply detecting radioactivity doesn’t mean it is present at health-affecting levels. High cancer rates can indeed have other causes.
Yes, the sodium burn pit workers were not the reactor techs. It had been a few years since I read about it, and I had a false memory, conflating the two. Wish there was an edit function on these posts!
I remember when Fukushima first went, there were lots of people in Los Angeles looking for Potassium Iodide pills to use prophylacticly against possible radiation coming across the sea on the north pacific jet stream.
I found it odd, since we’re all live right next to an ‘ok only for visitation’ zone. But I never got as far as researching the radiation level quantities for comparison.
http://www.ieso.ca/
It’s fun to pop in now and again on this site. It shows Ontario’s electric energy mix in real time, quantized to the hour.
Just randomly sampling it from time to time, i find nuclear does most of the work in Ontario, followed by hydro. Then gas>wind>coal>other junk – biofuels, etc. Wind is usually around 500 to 700 MW on the grid, but right now it’s only 260MW. And wind is always contributing more than coal does, every time i look.
Some wind bagger on Youtube showed a map of all the currently proposed wind development areas, and it seemed pretty extensive, so I’m waiting to see wind hit 1000MW and find what they do with the gas % when that happens.
I wonder are there any other countries publishing their current energy mixes in real time on the net?
I think there is a good public relations opportunity here, as people can log on and cheer on the renewables, or be surprised on how much they are contributing in real time.
The Uk site is
http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/
Nice, thanks!
From a very active anti-nuclear campaigner 20 years ago I have mellowed. AGW is such an issue that it seemed a little short sighted to be so anti. The record for nuclear compared to say coal as far as health is reasonably good over 60 years of civil nuclear history.
But I have very large reservations-
cost [especially the hidden costs]
peak uranium – at current rates there is decades of fuel but a ramp up in construction would reduce that to decades or less.
it is centralised and requires special security- a loss of human rights in some circumstances. decentralised renewables have no need for special police [Britain’s small nuclear police are the only ones who are permanently armed] or powers.
Accidents are problematic
And after 60 years no waste has been disposed of.
human civilisation is on the brink of downfall- either AGW or peak oil so will the waste be safe if we have a few centuries of dark-ages. sure we could bury it under a huge amount of concrete in a huge monument with warnings and curses of death to all who enter- but we know how well that worked out with pyramids-
so if we can- a big if- do without then we should try
Well, to respond to your points…
Cost – nuclear is expensive to build; more expensive than it could be perhaps partly because there are few plants being built. I’m somewhat hopeful that small modular reactors may challenge the costs somewhat by building the critical parts in a factory setting on a more production basis.
“Hidden costs” doesn’t mean much on its own. It’s in danger of being a mental get-out clause to discard contrary evidence. If you were thinking of something specific, please add.
Uranium is no danger of running out. Known reserves are at decades of fuel, but this is a relatively long supply horizon compared to other minerals. If all else fails, for a doubling in the fuel price but a relatively small increase in the total generation cost, extraction from seawater gives a long term supply. Fuel is not the major cost for nuclear.
Nuclear power is relatively centralized, but I don’t especially see that as a particularly bad thing. The cost of security is in the price of the electricity.
Accidents are rare. Fukushima was in the context of a massive tsunami that killed thousands and wrecked infrastructure all along that coast, and has not been directly problematic in health terms. It has had a big economic cost, which I would argue arises more from fear (especially political timidity) than from radioactivity. But that is only my point of view.
If we have a dark age, we will have far worse things to worry about than nuclear waste. Essentially, 5 years after the nuclear power plant turns off, you will have to actually walk into the buildings where the fuel is to be at any noticeable risk. And if we’re talking about a couple of generations… well, as I say, if we regress that far there will be people dying of all sorts of things other than nuclear.
Cheers
““Hidden costs” doesn’t mean much on its own. It’s in danger of being a mental get-out clause to discard contrary evidence. If you were thinking of something specific, please add.”
“Hidden costs” means costs that are not presently known. Seeing as nuclear energy is too often a “learn as we go” proposition, such costs are abundant. It should be obvious (to anyone but obtuse fanatics) that specific examples of future hidden costs are not readily available because… well… They are HIDDEN. Specific examples of hidden costs from the past are numerous, though I am certain you will deny this
“Accidents are rare”
Rare being yet another relativistic phrase. Didn’t you just jump on someone for fear mongering because they dared to use the descriptive words “hot” and “fragile”?
There are currently 500 commercial reactors on this planet. Thus far, 5 commercial reactors have massively failed. If airlines had a 1% failure rate, there would be literally thousands of major airline disasters per year.
“Fukushima had caused “no discernible increase in health risks” outside Japan”
Finding this very hard to swallow. There is anequedotal evidence that the US bird population was impacted for chyrnobl. And on the west coast of north America there was some local evidence in local papers of heightened still births. I wish some reputable research could be done to confirm these links….
That’s again UNSCEAR, the same powerful organisation of 27 nuclear countries which claimed the “official death toll” from Chernobyl was 43. Funny that one of their lead authors is admitting in another paper that there are Uncertainties in cancer risk estimates for exposure to ionising radiation.
Here some rebuttal => FukushimaVoice: A Rebuttal to the January 11, 2013 Article by James Conca, “Like We’ve Been Saying — Radiation is Not A Big Deal,” Posted on Forbes Website
Also => ISIS Report 24/05/12
Chernobyl Deaths Top a Million Based on Real Evidence
“Those publications and papers, written by leading Eastern authorities, were downplayed or ignored by the IAEA and UNSCEAR. These agencies minimised their estimates by several ploys including [6]:
* Underestimating the level of radiation by averaging exposure over a large regions, such as an entire country; so high exposure doses and health statistics of the most contaminated areas are lumped together with the less and least exposed
* Ignoring internal sources of radiation due to inhalation and ingestion of radioactive material from fallout
* Using an obsolete and erroneous model of linear energy transfer due to external sources of ionising radiation
* Not counting diseases and conditions other than cancers
* Overestimating the natural background radiation; today’s ‘background’ has been greatly increased by discharges from nuclear activities including tests of nuclear weapons, use of depleted uranium, and uranium mining
* Suppressing and withholding information from the public.
Nevertheless, the devastating health impacts did not escape the notice of the hundreds of doctors, scientists and other citizens who had to bear witness to the deformities, sicknesses and deaths of exposed babies, children and adults in their care.
…
Some general effects of the Chernobyl accident that began to appear in the 3rd to 4th year and have continued over the following 10 to 15 years; these are as follows.
* Two to three times the general morbidity rate in the most contaminated territories (including children)
* Increase in primary illness
* Increase in the number of low birth-weight babies and birth defects
* Premature ageing (biological age 5-7 years higher than chronological age
* Poly-morbidity, the presence of a number of illnesses in one individual.
Specific health problems linked to radiation from Chernobyl affect practically all organ systems.
* The circulatory system (radiological lesions of the endothelium, the interior walls of the blood vessels)
* Heart disease
* The endocrine system (including non-cancerous diseases of the thyroid gland);
* The immune system
* The respiratory system (including lesions of the upper airways)
* The genito-urinary system and reproductive processes
* The skeleton (osteopenia and osteoporosis, low density or fragile bone)
* The central nervous and neuropsychiatric system (associated with organic modifications of the post-frontal, temporal and parieto-occipital lobes of the brain cortex and other deeper structures)
* The visual apparatus (including radiation cataracts)
* The digestive system
* Birth defects and developmental anomalies
* Thyroid cancer (not only in children but also in adults) and other malignant tumours
Other health impacts include the following.
* Alterations in the health of children born to irradiated parents (including the liquidators and also people who left the contaminated areas), and in particular those children who were irradiated in utero;
* Genetic alterations (frequent mutations of the somatic and germ tissues, changes in the secondary sex ratio).
One specific effect of the radioactive contamination from Chernobyl is the change in the secondary sex ratio (ratio of male/female births). After 1987, there was a statistically significant decrease in the number of girls born in some European countries [10]. In 2008, there was a deficit of female births worldwide of around a million [11].”
IMO UNSCEAR is nothing but a very abundant organisation to sanctify the harms coming from nuclear power generation.
Also => Global Research: Fukushima’s Catastrophic Aftermath: The Dangers of Worldwide Nuclear Radiation
I assume that most people recognize a Gish Gallop nowadays. Especially in the context of claiming that a senior scientific body of the UN is a conspiracy.
WHO agreement with IAEA:
In 1959 the World Health Organisation entered into an agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency which gave the unequivocally pro-nuclear IAEA a veto over WHO research into the effects of radiation.
It is important to bear in mind that the IAEA is dedicated to fostering the spread of nuclear power. That commitment is at the very begining of its constitution.
For fully half a century the WHO has been subservient to IAEA in matters of radiation and health. Under the WHO/IAEA Agreement (WHA12-40) of 28 May 1959, the IAEA has assumed a power of veto over WHO’s activities. Similar “agreements” constrain other UN agencies.
The Guardian: Toxic link: the WHO and the IAEA
A 50-year-old agreement with the IAEA has effectively gagged the WHO from telling the truth about the health risks of radiation
Sorry. Here the correct link to The Guardian:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/may/28/who-nuclear-power-chernobyl
More Gish in the Guardian, an op-ed from rabid anti-nuclearite Tickell who doesn’t worry about little things like proper use of logic and evidence.
Chernobyl is getting a new cap after the roof caved in 30 years later. Decommissioning a reactor accident of this magnitude is along term commitment. It seems like this is where radioactive waste will be stored forever.
http://analysis.nuclearenergyinsider.com/decommissioning/novarka-putting-new-cap-chernobyl
Cesium significantly concentrates in the environment.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12527234
http://apostilas.cena.usp.br/Osny/Cesium137bib.htm
In July 2011, meat from 11 cows shipped to Tokyo from Fukushima Prefecture was found to have 1,530 to 3,200 becquerels per kilogram of Cs-137, considerably exceeding the Japanese legal limit of 500 becquerels per kilogram at that time.[7
How did that happen? No bioaccumulation?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caesium-137
A quick look to Wikipedia is all it takes.
Yes. Peter.
Move along. Everything under control. Wind turbines kill birds. Solar is too expensive. Have a nice day.
And bioaccumulation? Its just a word.
Hey, I kinda like satire. Deniers are humorless. Not my fault.
A quick happy ending to Fukushima and Chernobyl is fantasy.
They are a permanent testament to our stupidity and technical hubris.
A few observations.
– When the Chernobyl roof collapsed, it was considered lucky, because if it happened in summer, the dust cloud would have drifted and contaminated further areas. The snow kept that from happening…..Mostly.
– The new Chernobyl enclosure is expected to last 100 years.
– The first Chernobyl enclosure lasted 30 years, then the roof collapsed.
– A building enclosing Chernobyl will have to be built and rebuilt for thousands of years to prevent the escape of radioactive debris.
– The structures enclosing Chernobyl and Fukushima are huge and expensive
– Corium(molten meltdown outside the vessel) is buried where it lies in Chernobyl
– The reactor area in Fukushima is too radioactive for robots.
– Nobody knows where the corium is in Fukushima – its too hot to go near it.
– The area under Fukushima will have to be enclosed to prevent it from leaking into the ocean and the water table.
– Bioaccumulation is high in fish. Tuna and dolphin have high rates of concentration. .
– Milk and fish are a much higher bioaccumulation concern than beef.
We have a problem. Why isn’t the Chernobyl roof collapse big news? Could it be we don’t want to talk about it? Maybe we need to join AA. Atomics Anonymous. You can overcome your addiction. Recognizing denial is the first step. We need a 12 step program for recovering nuclear addicts.
BBC Horizons:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9G6IA9ni2RM&w=640&h=390]
Nice one, sir charles. BTW, radiation causes cataracts and heart problems. Many of the victims of the “demon core” died of heart problems related to radiation. Its not just cancer. For a look at what uranium mining is like, take a good, hard, look at this:
http://www.zreportage.com/zReportage.html?num=zrep469
File this under , “The lies of Tepco”. Tepco claims the reactors melted down due to the tsunami, but the evidence shows otherwise. At unit 1, plant workers reported cooling pipes bursting, emergency cooling designed for LOCA turned on, radiation monitors alarms went off a mile away, and radiation plant levels went high, all before the tsunami.
http://www.greens.org/s-r/57/57-11.html