SimplyInfo.org Fukushima Nuclear News Roundup; April 21, 2014
The new manager of Fukushima Daiichi admitted the string of failures at the plant were embarrassing and that the plant was still not fully under control. After TEPCO caused contaminated reactor water to flow into the basement of two buildings not used to store highly contaminated water, they now want to make those power switches “tamper proof”. What TEPCO has not mentioned was why there were pumps and piping in place and aligned in a way it would send water to those buildings when they never intended to send reactor water to those buildings. The Japanese internal affairs office said it would tap “big data” to to convey evacuation information to local governments and residents during a disaster. Two things cited as being sources were weather data and internet sites like Twitter. Part of … Read entire article »
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Prefabricated Tanks Installed At Fukushima Daiichi
As part of the efforts by the government and METI to improve the contaminated water problem at Fukushima Daiichi new tanks have been being installed. Some tanks were welded together on site. A new set of tanks is being prefabricated elsewhere and shipped to the plant for installation. The pre-assembled tanks are put together and shipped by barge to the plant where they are transferred by crane to a flat bed trailer and driven to the … Read entire article »
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Contaminated Zone Found Inside WIPP Mine
The Associated Press is reporting that Thursday’s mine entry effort found widespread contamination the further they went into the mine. It was said to be in the active storage area, that would be panel 7. According to previous WIPP reports no work was going on in the mine at the time after it was shut down by the truck fire weeks earlier. DOE is still claiming that either a roof collapse or a container puncture by … Read entire article »
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Tamura Fukushima Residents Angry Over Govt. Hiding Radiation Levels
Residents of Tamura, the town that recently had the evacuation level lifted are angry at the government for withholding radiation reading data that showed the levels in the town were much higher than admitted. Some water sources are still not usable due to ongoing re-contamination of the local streams, farming is still a high stakes gamble. Read more at NHK http://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/english/news/20140418_42.html This article would not be possible without the extensive efforts of the SimplyInfo research team Join the conversation … Read entire article »
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Struggles For Information & Justice Continue In Japan Over Fukushima
Hyogo prefecture has been stalling the release of a nuclear crisis study’s data. A freedom of information act request mandated the release of the information to the public but the government has stalled doing this leading some to believe they are hiding the extent of the risk to the public from nearby nuclear plants. If you thought TEPCO was treating the residents of Fukushima horribly, the treatment of their own employees has been even worse. In … Read entire article »
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US Nuclear Plagued With New Problems
(this article now available in Polish via http://www.marmas.nazwa.pl/wordpress/?p=549 we thank them for their translation efforts) The much touted SMR nuclear reactor program that has been claimed to be the next generation of nuclear plants is in trouble before it has even really started. Babcock & Wilcox, long time nuclear company located in Tennessee has scaled back their SMR reactor development. They are unable to find investors or customers for the concept reactor. The US Department of Energy has given $226 million to help B&W fund the project. The company booked a loss last year and said they would drastically cut how much money they put into the project this year. Entergy executives have been selling off large amounts of their personal company stock. There have already been hints that the company’s nuclear fleet is … Read entire article »
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Japan Radiation Embargoed Food List
The Japanese government has been wooing the media with claims that all the contamination in the food supply has miraculously just gone away. This is of course not exactly what is going on. Some food products have been able to lower contamination levels by modifying farming tactics, but this has been a very limited set of circumstances. What is not mentioned is how many foods are still being held back from sale and that they … Read entire article »
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Fukushima Reactor Water Pump Switch Mistaken For Air Conditioner
TEPCO still has not completely ruled out this being a deliberate act, but is assuming it may have been a worker error. Earlier in the week highly contaminated reactor water was pumped into the basements of two service buildings up on the hill. TEPCO explains that the switches for the pumps only identified with a number looked similar to a set of switches for the air conditioner system. TEPCO claims these switches were marked accurately … Read entire article »
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High Level Water Leak At Fukushima ALPS System
NHK is reporting the leak of water being injected into a high impact storage container at the ALPS decontamination system. TEPCO’s reports made the leaked water sound minor in size and radioactivity. NHK reports it to be far worse. “The utility says more than 1,000 liters of water overflowed and are now within a barrier inside the ALPS building. The firm says the water contains 3.8 million becquerels of beta ray emitting materials such as strontium and … Read entire article »
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Corium Experiments; Pedestal Behaviors Using Lead
As part of the ongoing work to better understand how corium (melted reactor fuel) can behave after burning through the reactor vessel we have completed another set of experiments. SimplyInfo.org member Edano prepared and ran tests using lead as the melt material. Lead had been used to stand in for melted reactor fuel in some of the very early experiments at Brookhaven National Lab in the US. The previous set of experiments involved melted glass … Read entire article »
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Radiation Level At Koriyama School Same As Near Daiichi
This report today by 47 news shows the decontamination work underway in a school yard of a Koriyama elementary school. The radiation level seen in the photo is about 3 uSv/h. This is the same radiation level a citizen documented in Tomioka recently, we reported on that yesterday. Tomioka is in the evacuation zone and is one of the towns that the Fukushima Daiichi disaster site resides in. Both readings were taken in a similar manner … Read entire article »
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Fukushima Towns Take A Stand Against IAEA, UNSCEAR
A number of towns in Fukushima prefecture have decided to fight the IAEA & UNSCEAR over misuse and abuse of the data of the exposed populations. The Japanese government sent out an email that the IAEA was being requested by the IAEA for their reports and that it was “necessary”. Half of the municipalities contacted have refused to hand over radiation exposure data of the residents. The initial email from the government gave reason to be … Read entire article »
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Fukushima Fuel Fragment Found In Home Vacuum Bag 460km From Disaster Site
Marco Kaltofan at Worcester Polytechnic Institute has issued more information about some unusual findings from a home vacuum cleaner bag they tested. The vacuum bag came from a home in Nagoya Japan, 460 km south and west of Fukushima Daiichi. We reported earlier on their discovery that something was very “off” with this sample sent in for examination. More details have been released as the additional testing was completed and found that: The single radioactive particle was identified … Read entire article »
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Citizens Continue To Find Inaccurate Govt. Radiation Monitors In Fukushima
Citizens continue to find government radiation monitoring stations that read lower than the actual reading for the location. This one in Tomioka was off by a full microsievert per hour. These discrepancies become a considerable problem when they are then used to estimate possible human exposure on an annual scale or to declare potential health risks over time. This article would not be possible without the extensive efforts of the SimplyInfo research team Join the conversation … Read entire article »
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Fukushima Highly Radioactive Water Accidentally Released From Reactor Basement
TEPCO has admitted that highly radioactive water from reactor building basements was pumped out of the buildings into the basements of other buildings. In order to do this workers would have had to manually operate the pumps. These pumps are used to reverse water into the reactor buildings or send it to other destinations. They are still investigating how the incident happened. Asahi Shimbun cited the water as being contaminated with tens of millions of … Read entire article »
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Fukushima Unit 4; 638 Fuel Assemblies Removed
638 spent fuel assemblies have been removed from the unit 4 spent fuel pool to the common pool as of today. http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/decommision/index-e.html This article would not be possible without the extensive efforts of the SimplyInfo research team Join the conversation at chat.simplyinfo.org All content is copyright SimplyInfo.org. Content cited, quoted etc. from other sources is under the respective rights of that content owner. If you are viewing this page on any website other than www.simplyinfo.org (or www.fukuleaks.org) it … Read entire article »
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Japan Govt. Orchestrates Fukushima Denial, Nuclear Restarts
The Japanese government continues to push for reactor restarts and to establish nuclear power as part of the national energy policy even though public opinion is still heavily against it. At the same time the government has pushed for politically motivated reopening of parts of the evacuation zone. The Japanese government has declared nuclear power as an “important baseload energy resource“. While the government insists that nuclear power is an important power source they did not … Read entire article »
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TEPCO Ignores Tank Alarms For Hours, Here Is Why
Ex SKF found the reason why TEPCO workers had been ignoring the new tank alarms for hours at a time. All of the tank alarms feed into a monitoring room where a PC is used to keep track of the tank data. Someone turned off the volume on the PC so the workers never heard the audio alarm. This apparently was like this for months. Read the whole thing here: http://ex-skf.blogspot.com/2014/04/fukushima-i-npp-tank-alarm-didnt-sound.html This article would not be possible without … Read entire article »
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Fukushima Daiichi Radioactive Tank Leak To Pacific Far Worse Than Admitted
TEPCO has admitted that the radioactive sludge leak from the H4 tank farm last August was more than three times worse than admitted. TEPCO has already been under fire for hiding or downplaying information leading up to the IOC decision on who would host the next summer Olympics in September. The leak was initially rated at 80 million becquerels of strontium 90, part of which leaked into the Pacific. At this rate the NRA had declared … Read entire article »
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Fukushima Students Left With Few Good Choices
Some students in Fukushima have returned to schools on the edges of the evacuation zone. A school in Tamura reopened even though few families have returned. Students are given an hour bus ride into the area that was formerly part of the evacuation zone to attend school each day. There have been considerable disputes about the reopening of Tamura after it was discovered that the radiation levels were still high and the government had doctored … Read entire article »
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Fukushima’s Atomic Shopping Basket
This was found in a report on robotic decontamination work being conducted inside unit 3. Workers have had to innovate to overcome specific challenges when working with robots to do tasks within the reactor buildings. In this effort two robots are cleaning up debris inside unit 3′s first floor area. The areas are too radioactive 3 years later to have workers stay in the building for more than brief minutes. Packbot and SoRa are cleaning the … Read entire article »
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TEPCO To Release Groundwater At Fukushima, Potential Consequences
TEPCO has gained permission from fishing groups to dump contaminated groundwater into the Pacific as long as it is below government release levels. The fishing groups asked for 3rd party testing of the water and for government compensation if this continues to ruin their industry. Within a day TEPCO began pumping groundwater into a set of old bolt together tanks. It has yet to be published who this 3rd party to do testing will be. The … Read entire article »
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US Nuclear Regulator Refuses To Fix Evacuation Zone Flaws
While Japan is implementing larger evacuation zones and comprehensive evacuation zone plans after the Fukushima disaster, the US has decided to change nothing. A petition asking them to review the 10 mile evacuation zone plan by the US NRC was rejected. Japan is working on detailed evacuation plans including local evacuation drills where locals participate. The US scales back their protective actions. Read more here: http://www.capecodonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20140410/NEWS/404100337 This article would not be possible without the extensive efforts of the SimplyInfo … Read entire article »
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US Coalition Call In To Congress Day, Demand Fukushima Food Testing
A coalition of groups and the Fukushima Fallout Awareness Network are asking people to call, write or email Congress today to demand effective and transparent testing of the food supply for radiation contamination. More information about the national call in day today (April 10, 2014) can be found here at https://www.facebook.com/RADSrBAD2EAT Congressional contacts can be found here: http://www.usa.gov/Contact/Elected.shtml FFAN has been pushing for the FDA to use a more scientifically sound “intervention level” for radioactive contamination in the US food … Read entire article »
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Fukushima News Roundup; April 9, 2014
University students will become involved in some of the IRID research efforts to decommission Fukushima Daiichi. They are also going ahead with building a mock reactor building and research facility in Nahara. They expect that to be done by 2015. http://the-japan-news.com/news/article/0001189927 Fukushima Daiichi expects to create 560,000 tons of radioactive rubble by 2020. http://ajw.asahi.com/article/0311disaster/fukushima/AJ201404080066 Fukushima fishermen agreed to the release of some contaminated groundwater into the sea. They did make two demands. That a 3rd part test the water and that the government would cover any business damage including that from “harmful rumor”. http://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/english/news/20140407_36.html A day later TEPCO announced they would begin pumping up this groundwater and putting it into holding tanks. It has not been disclosed who this third party is who will test the water. Anything below government dumping limits will be released to … Read entire article »
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Drone Photographs Fukushima Evacuation Zone
A drone camera has been used to take panorama photos inside the evacuation zone. Taichi Furuhashi and the Center For Spacial Information Science photographed three towns, Iitate village, Hisanohama, and Tomioka. The 2014 new photos can be found here. This article would not be possible without the extensive efforts of the SimplyInfo research team Join the conversation at chat.simplyinfo.org All content is copyright SimplyInfo.org. Content cited, quoted etc. from other sources is under the respective rights of that content owner. If … Read entire article »
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Fukushima Unit 2; 5th Floor Work Progresses.. Sort of.
TEPCO released some images and information about the work progress on the 5th floor refueling floor of unit 2. This is where the Warrior robot became stranded and had to be abandoned after they were unable to restart it. They have managed to cut down one of the reactor well fences using the Warrior robot. The second fence further across the refueling floor is where Warrior failed. It appears to have hung itself up while cutting … Read entire article »
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Fukushima Unit 4; 594 Fuel Assemblies Removed
594 fuel assemblies have been removed to the common pool from unit 4′s spent fuel pool. http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/decommision/index-e.html This article would not be possible without the extensive efforts of the SimplyInfo research team Join the conversation at chat.simplyinfo.org All content is copyright SimplyInfo.org. Content cited, quoted etc. from other sources is under the respective rights of that content owner. If you are viewing this page on any website other than www.simplyinfo.org (or www.fukuleaks.org) it may be plagiarized, please let … Read entire article »
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Fukushima Unit 1 To Undergo Spent Fuel Pool Desalination
TEPCO reported they will now remove the salt from the unit 1 spent fuel pool. Maybe you are asking why now, over 3 years later are they just getting around to this? We wondered the same thing. In reviewing our older notes it appears TEPCO may not have added any water to the unit 1 spent fuel pool during those early days where they were forced to use sea water for cooling at the plant, … Read entire article »
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Fukushima Unit 3 Shield Wall Installation Begins
Decontamination work and installation of a shield wall around the reactor well has begun at unit 3 Fukushima Daiichi. The colored sections on the diagram indicate where various types of decontamination will be attempted before the shield wall will go up around the reactor well. The hope is to cut down on radiation from the area so workers can be closer to the refueling floor and to cut down on radiation impact it is causing … Read entire article »
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Fukushima Unit 3 Fuel Pool Debris Removal Progress
TEPCO has accomplished some debris removal from the spent fuel pool as documented in this report. Earlier in 2014 work was conducted to remove debris that was primarily rebar and handrails. Work in March began to focus on removal roof trussing so they could get closer to removing the fuel handling machine and mast. The pool is still quite full of fine debris on top of the fuel racks as can be seen in the photo. … Read entire article »
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IPPNW Disputes Accuracy Of UNSCEAR Report On Fukushima
IPPNW has disputed the accuracy of the new UNSCEAR report on the Fukushima disaster. We reviewed the report last year by UNSCEAR and found a similar string of bias, inaccuracies and purposeful manipulation of data to achieve a desired outcome. IPPNW found many issues in this year’s UNSCEAR report including: UNSCEAR uses the fact that cancer can not be traced back to an origin to explain away any potential cancers from the Fukushima disaster. This tactic is well known among the tobacco and asbestos industries. The source of the data used by UNSCEAR is primarily the IAEA, TEPCO and the Japanese government. Anyone who has been following events in Fukushima knows none of these sources are considered unbiased or accurate. Much dispute about the validity of the data from these entities exists. All … Read entire article »
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Fukushima Daiichi Work Stopped Due To Tsunami Warning
Due to the tsunami warning caused by the earthquake in Chile, work at the plant was called off yesterday. There was no formal announcement of the resumption of work as of this morning US time. Routine reports including well testing were released later in the day. This article would not be possible without the extensive efforts of the SimplyInfo research team Join the conversation at chat.simplyinfo.org All content is copyright SimplyInfo.org. Content cited, quoted etc. from other sources … Read entire article »
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Two Japanese Power Companies Ask For Bailouts
First Hokkaido Electric, now Kyushu Electric is asking for a government bank to give them money. Both are complaining about unexpected costs involved with operating without their nuclear power plants. Kyushu Electric owns quite a few reactors, Hokkaido Electric only owns two. This may sound familiar to readers in the US after Exelon Nuclear began asking for government bailouts because other sources of electricity were so cheap it is putting them out of business. In Japan … Read entire article »
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Unit 2 Frozen Trench Installation Begins At Fukushima Daiichi
Work has begun to freeze the unit 2 trench at Fukushima Daiichi. This has been a problematic area since the initial disaster. In early 2011 the trench was found to be leaking highly radioactive water. The effort to freeze the trench is hoped to help block water flow so the trench can be emptied. The existing highly radioactive water will eventually be pumped into the system of storage and water treatment tanks. http://www.tepco.co.jp/nu/fukushima-np/handouts/2014/images/handouts_140328_08-j.pdf This article would not … Read entire article »
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8.0 Quake In Chile, Tsunami Warning Issued
http://www.tsunami.gov/product.php?id=TSUPAC.20140401.2355.001 Tsunami warning for South America. More information as it comes out. This article would not be possible without the extensive efforts of the SimplyInfo research team Join the conversation at chat.simplyinfo.org All content is copyright SimplyInfo.org. Content cited, quoted etc. from other sources is under the respective rights of that content owner. If you are viewing this page on any website other than www.simplyinfo.org (or www.fukuleaks.org) it may be plagiarized, please let us know. If you wish to … Read entire article »
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UK Reactor Shut Down 5 Months Without Informing Public
The Dungeness nuclear power plant was shut down for 5 months to deal with inadequate flood protection issues. What is more unusual is that the public was never informed by the operator or the country’s nuclear regulator. The area has been subject to severe flooding in recent years and both the operator and the regulator knew the plant was at risk. The UK nuclear regulator does not report the status of nuclear power plants as the … Read entire article »
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One Fukushima Evacuation Town Reopens
Part of Tamura city has been reopened by the government but few plan to return. Mostly the older residents have decided to take the government offer to return to their former homes. Mainichi reports each evacuee that returns gets a 900,000 yen cash payout for doing so. Those who stay away for now can continue to receive evacuee compensation. The government threshold for allowing an area to reopen is to estimate an annual exposure of 20 … Read entire article »
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Worker Death At Fukushima Daiichi Completely Preventable
TEPCO released an interim report into the recent construction worker’s death at the plant. The report showed that the worker had been working in a small cave like area while jackhammering concrete overhead. This was under the overhang of the building foundation. This scenario would have been considered inappropriate under the worker safety rules in most developed countries. The hole dug for access to this area of the foundation was held back with plywood and steel … Read entire article »
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Fukushima Unit 4; 550 Assemblies Removed
TEPCO has removed 550 assemblies from the spent fuel pool to the common pool as of March 31, 2014. http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/decommision/index-e.html This article would not be possible without the extensive efforts of the SimplyInfo research team Join the conversation at chat.simplyinfo.org All content is copyright SimplyInfo.org. Content cited, quoted etc. from other sources is under the respective rights of that content owner. If you are viewing this page on any website other than www.simplyinfo.org (or www.fukuleaks.org) it may be … Read entire article »
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