The Accident is not over.
In Fukushima, the cauldrons are still bubbling, and only a massive and expensive effort of over 5000 people is holding it at bay, while engineers work, in an environment so radioactive that it even disables robots, to gather and store the deadly debris of history’s worst nuclear accident.
It’s one thing to know this, (I did), but quite another to see it on video in such detail as Miles O’Brien provides here in part 1 of a PBS report.
The sheer scale of the remediation effort at Fukushima is mind exploding, and to realize that it will have to be ongoing for decades, if not centuries, is sobering in the extreme.
As of 2022, costs have reached 82 billion US dollars, and could eventually crack one trillion.
The time required will be measured in centuries.
Around 12.1 trillion yen ($82 billion) has already been spent to deal with the 2011 disaster at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, according to sources at the Board of Audit of Japan.
That means more than half of the government’s total estimated cost of 21.5 trillion yen, including compensation payments and reactor decommissioning expenses, has been used in the 11 years since the meltdowns occurred.
However, the nuclear decommissioning process is not going smoothly, and there are fears that the planned discharge of treated radioactive water from the plant into the sea could damage the reputations of the disaster-affected areas.
Expenses could still expand, and the BOA on Nov. 7 asked the government to review its projected cost.
The BOA also asked the government to explain how the public would bear the cost if it is reviewed.
The government, however, said the cost will likely not increase.
“We sincerely listen to various views but at least at the moment, we do not believe the cost will surpass the estimated figure, and we do not plan to review it,” said an official for the Agency for Natural Resources and Energy.
The BOA studied costs incurred up until fiscal 2021.
For those who would like to think that tritium is harmless, I would encourage you to take a look at what some actual experts have to say in the latest episode of the Nuclear Hotseat podcast:
NH #636: Japan Puts World in Radioactive Hot Water: Boycotts, Protests, Fukushima’s Tritium Dangers – Fairlie, Deer-Jones, Busby
The nuclear industry is fond of treating radioactive tritium as some kind of benign radionuclide – not dangerous, nothing to get your knickers in a twist about, there there Missy… – in order to dump massive quantities of tritium-contaminated water into our oceans. This narrative could not be more wrong. To build understanding, I’ve revisited two important interviews dealing with tritium and edited together the important bits to give you some concentrated clarity.
https://nuclearhotseat.com/podcast/radioactive-tritium-fukushima-dangers-boycotts-protests/
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