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Reasons for Japan to dump nuclear power more obvious now than ever.
To make sure we never have another nuclear disaster like the one in Fukushima, Japan should take the decision to abandon dependence on nuclear power.
It has been nearly six years since the triple-meltdown at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant. Two things seem symbolic of this time: the simultaneous lifting of evacuation orders for the Fukushima Prefecture village of Iitate and other nearby communities, and the recent glimpse of what appears to be melted nuclear fuel in the plant's No. 2 reactor.
One is significant for all those residents who had no idea when they would be able to return to their hometowns, and the other for how much we understand of what is going on inside the stricken Fukushima No. 1 plant reactors, which until recently had been very nearly nothing. Considering how things were going before, these developments can be considered a step in the right direction.
However, if we take a cold, hard look at the situation, there are facts that must be seen as equally representative of the current reality: that the disaster has stolen so much from so many, and that real recovery will be a decades-long struggle with reconstruction and plant decommissioning.
Any visitor to the Fukushima plant will get a keen sense of how demanding the work is to dismantle its ruined reactors. The area where full face masks are required has been significantly reduced, and working conditions have certainly been improved. However, there is still no target for removing the melted nuclear fuel from the reactors -- the greatest challenge to decommissioning -- and no prospect for setting one.
Last month, plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) inserted a "scorpion" robot into the No. 2 reactor containment vessel, and tried to steer it to a spot right under the core. However, its path was blocked by piles of dark material, and in the end the robot was unable to determine the state of the reactor's nuclear fuel.
There are more than 800 workers at the Fukushima plant. Some have been exposed to excessive radiation due to unexpected tasks. They are barred from working inside the reactor buildings, where radiation is extremely high, and absorb higher doses just by getting near them.
Nevertheless, the state of the nuclear fuel in each reactor must be ascertained, and a plan must be devised to remove it.
The No. 1 and 3 reactors are thought to be in worse shape than the No. 2 reactor. The government and TEPCO are aiming to extract the fuel from all the reactors starting in 2021, but that is wildly optimistic. A drastic rethink of the entire decommissioning strategy and schedule -- including the development of the robots that will take on much of the work -- is likely needed.
The burdens placed on Japanese society by the nuclear disaster include the swelling financial cost of dealing with its aftermath.
The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry says that reactor decommissioning, victim compensation, decontamination and other nuclear disaster-related costs will hit 21.5 trillion yen -- twice the initial estimate. However, even this figure does not include the cost of disposing of the melted nuclear fuel among other expenses, and is thus certain to rise.
We also cannot overlook the creation of a new system to charge third-party power suppliers to cover part of the compensation costs -- a charge the power supply companies will pass on to their customers, thus effectively making a wide swath of Japanese society pay for TEPCO's compensation liabilities. There are also apparently plans to implement a similar system to cover the decommissioning costs for Japan's aged reactors.
It has been less than a year since the power supply market was opened to competition. Making not just the big utilities but also the new third-party electricity suppliers with no connection whatsoever to the nuclear power business pay for reactor decommissioning is a blow to the very heart of electricity market liberalization. The government's insistence that "nuclear power is comparatively cheap even including accident countermeasure costs" no longer holds water.
If the government is to demand the Japanese people take on this financial burden, it must admit that the "cheap nuclear power" line doesn't match the facts, and reroute Japan's power generation plan to a nuclear-free future.
Looking at the harsh realities of dealing with the Fukushima nuclear disaster, we cannot consent to the ongoing string of reactor restarts. Utilities have applied to the Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) to restart 26 reactors at 16 plants under standards drawn up in the wake of the March 2011 Fukushima meltdowns. Just three reactors have been put back on line so far, but 12 more at six plants have or are expected to pass NRA inspections. Among them are three reactors that have been in operation for 40-plus years.
A majority of Japanese citizens are opposed to the restarts, conflicting with the government's evident enthusiasm for getting reactors back on line despite its stated goal of reducing dependence on nuclear power.
Over the past six years, we have learned that Japan would not run short of electricity if it abandoned nuclear power. A more deeply rooted argument in favour of nuclear generation is that it is needed to combat global warming.
Certainly, replacing nuclear plants with fossil fuel-driven power generation would increase carbon dioxide emissions. It is impossible to ignore the negative effect this would have on global warming.
However, Japan's greenhouse gas emissions have in fact begun to dip slightly even as reactor restarts remain stalled. According to the Environment Ministry, fiscal 2015 greenhouse gas emissions were down 5.2 percent from fiscal 2005 levels, and 6 percent down from 2013 levels.
Japan is obliged by international treaty to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 3.8 percent from 2005 levels by fiscal 2020. The country has already met that commitment even without nuclear power. Nevertheless, for Japan to strive for even greater reductions that it promised under the Paris Agreement, it must yet expand energy saving measures and renewable power generation.
Global investment in energy is shifting in force to renewables. According to the International Energy Agency (IAE), of the $420 billion U.S. invested in power generation in 2015, some $290 billion was put into renewables.
The prices of solar panels and wind turbines are falling fast, and offer a cheaper alternative to traditional thermal generation in an increasing number of cases.
The nuclear business is in decline in the developed world, as is evidenced by the deep troubles of Japan's Toshiba Corp. and France's Areva SA. At the same time, the renewable energy industry is growing by leaps and bounds.
If Japan shuts its eyes to this reality and continues to pour more of its resources into keeping nuclear power going than into renewable energy, it will likely be left behind by the rest of the world.
We have no choice but to carry the burden of the Fukushima nuclear disaster for decades to come. We will overcome this crisis, but we will need support.
To make sure we never have another nuclear disaster like the one in Fukushima, Japan should take the decision to abandon dependence on nuclear power. That would be the best support of all.
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Japan's $320 million ice wall gamble at Fukushima.
Officially named the Land-Side Impermeable Wall, the project sounds like a fanciful idea from science fiction. But it is about to become a reality in an ambitious, and controversial, bid to halt an unrelenting flood of groundwater into the the damaged reactor buildings.
Japan’s $320 Million Gamble at Fukushima: An Underground Ice Wall
By MARTIN FACKLERAUG. 29, 2016
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At the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station in Japan, 95-foot tanks used to store contaminated water abound. Credit Ko Sasaki for The New York Times
FUKUSHIMA DAIICHI NUCLEAR POWER STATION — The part above ground doesn’t look like much, a few silver pipes running in a straight line, dwarfed by the far more massive, scarred reactor buildings nearby.
More impressive is what is taking shape unseen beneath: an underground wall of frozen dirt 100 feet deep and nearly a mile in length, intended to solve a runaway water crisis threatening the devastated Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station in Japan.
Officially named the Land-Side Impermeable Wall, but better known simply as the ice wall, the project sounds like a fanciful idea from science fiction or a James Bond film. But it is about to become a reality in an ambitious, and controversial, bid to halt an unrelenting flood of groundwater into the damaged reactor buildings since the disaster five years ago when an earthquake and a tsunami caused a triple meltdown.
Built by the central government at a cost of 35 billion yen, or some $320 million, the ice wall is intended to seal off the reactor buildings within a vast, rectangular-shaped barrier of man-made permafrost. If it becomes successfully operational as soon as this autumn, the frozen soil will act as a dam to block new groundwater from entering the buildings. It will also help stop leaks of radioactive water into the nearby Pacific Ocean, which have decreased significantly since the calamity but may be continuing.
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However, the ice wall has also been widely criticized as an expensive and overly complex solution that may not even work. Such concerns re-emerged this month after the plant’s operator announced that a section that was switched on more than four months ago had yet to fully freeze. Some also warn that the wall, which is electrically powered, may prove as vulnerable to natural disasters as the plant itself, which lost the ability to cool its reactors after the 45-foot tsunami caused a blackout there.
The reactor buildings are vulnerable to an influx of groundwater because of how the operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co., or Tepco, built the plant in the 1960s, by cutting away a hillside to place it closer to the sea, so the plant could pump in water more easily. That also put the buildings in contact with a deep layer of permeable rock filled with water, mostly rain and melted snow from the nearby Abukuma Mountains, that flows to the Pacific.
The buildings managed to keep the water out until the accident on March 11, 2011. Either the natural disasters themselves, or the explosive meltdowns of three of the plant’s six reactors that followed, are believed to have cracked the buildings’ basements, allowing groundwater to pour in. Nearly 40,000 gallons of water a day keep flooding into the buildings.
Once inside, the water becomes highly radioactive, impeding efforts to eventually dismantle the plant. During the accident, the uranium fuel grew so hot that some of it is believed to have melted through the reactor’s steel floors and possibly into the basement underneath, though no one knows exactly where it lies. The continual flood of radioactive water has prevented engineers from searching for the fuel.
Since the accident, five robots sent into the reactor buildings have failed to return because of high radiation levels and obstruction from debris.
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Pipes containing coolant are being used to help create an underground ice wall to try to stop contaminated water from leaking. Credit Ko Sasaki for The New York Times
The water has also created a waste-management nightmare because Tepco must pump it out into holding tanks as quickly as it enters the buildings, to prevent it from overflowing into the Pacific. The company says that it has built more than 1,000 tanks that now hold more than 800,000 tons of radioactive water, enough to fill more than 320 Olympic-size swimming pools.
On a recent visit to the plant, workers were busily erecting more durable, welded tanks to replace the temporary ones thrown up in a hurry during the early years after the accident, some of which have leaked. Every available patch of space on the sprawling plant grounds now appears to be filled with 95-foot tanks.
“We have to escape from this cycle of ever more water building up inside the plant,” said Yuichi Okamura, a general manager of Tepco’s nuclear power division who guided a reporter through Fukushima Daiichi. About 7,000 workers are employed in the cleanup.
The ice wall is a high-technology bid to break that cycle by installing what might be the world’s largest freezer. Pipes almost 100 feet long have been sunk into the ground at roughly three-foot intervals, and filled with a brine solution supercooled to minus 30 degrees Celsius, or minus 22 Fahrenheit. Each pipe is supposed to freeze a column of soil about a foot and a half in radius, large enough to reach the ice column created by its neighboring pipes and form a seamless barrier.
Engineers with the wall’s builder, the construction giant Kajima Corp., estimate that it will take about two months for the soil around a pipe to fully freeze. Solidifying the entire wall, which consists of 1,568 such underground pipes, will require 30 large refrigeration units and consume enough electricity to light more than 13,000 Japanese homes for a year.
Fukushima Five Years After Nuclear Disaster
Five years after an earthquake and tsunami devastated the northeast Japanese coast, Japan has not fully recovered.
The technique of using frozen barriers to block groundwater has been used to build tunnels and mines around the world, but not on this scale. And certainly not on the site of a major nuclear disaster.
Since the start, the project has attracted its share of skeptics. Some say buried obstacles at the plant, including tunnels that linked the reactor buildings to other structures, will leave holes in the ice wall, making it more like a sieve. Others question why such an exotic solution is necessary when a traditional steel or concrete wall might perform better.
Some call the ice wall a flashy but desperate gambit to tame the water problem, after the government and Tepco were initially slow to address it. Adding to the urgency is the 2020 Olympics, which Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan helped win for Tokyo three years ago by assuring the International Olympic Committee that the water troubles at Fukushima Daiichi were under control.
“It’s a Hail Mary play,” said Azby Brown, a Japan-based researcher for Safecast, an independent radiation-monitoring group. “Tepco underestimated the groundwater problem in the beginning, and now Japan is trying to catch up with a massive technical fix that is very expensive.”
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Supporters and skeptics alike will soon learn if that gambit will succeed. After two years of work, Kajima finished installing the pipes and refrigerator units to create the ice wall in February. At the end of March, it switched on part of the ice wall for the first time — roughly half a mile that runs between the reactor buildings and the Pacific. Most of the other, uphill side of the wall was activated in mid-June.
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One of the approximately 7,000 workers being employed in the cleanup of Fukushima Daiichi, which was devastated by an earthquake and a tsunami in 2011. Credit Ko Sasaki for The New York Times
Kajima is freezing the wall in stages under orders from the Nuclear Regulation Authority, Japan’s nuclear watchdog. The authority is concerned that cutting off the groundwater too suddenly might lead to a reversal of flows, causing the radioactive water accumulated inside the reactor buildings to start pouring out into the surrounding soil, possibly reaching the Pacific. It has told Kajima to leave a half-dozen “gateways” in the uphill side that will not be closed until much of the contaminated water is drained from the buildings.
This month, Tepco told the nuclear agency that the seaside segment of the ice wall had frozen about 99 percent solid. It says a few spots have failed to solidify because they contain buried rubble or sand left from the plant’s construction a half-century ago, which now allow groundwater to flow through so quickly that it will not freeze.
Tatsuhiro Yamagishi, a spokesman for Tepco, said the company was trying to plug these holes in the ice wall with quick-drying cement. “We have started to see some progress in temperature decrease,” he said.
Even if the cement helps make the ice wall watertight, skeptics question how long it can last. They point out that such frozen barriers are usually temporary against groundwater at construction sites. They say the brine solution used to chill the pipes is highly corrosive, which could make them break or leak. It is also unclear whether the system could break down under the stresses of operating in a high-radiation environment where another earthquake could lead to another power loss.
“Why build such an elaborate and fragile wall when there is a more permanent solution available?” said Sumio Mabuchi, a former construction minister who has called for building a slurry wall, a trench filled with liquid concrete that is commonly used to block water.
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Workers must wear protective gear while inside the plant. Credit Ko Sasaki for The New York Times
Isao Abe, a Kajima engineer overseeing the ice wall, said his company had made the wall more durable by installing underground pipes that are easy to replace if they corrode. He also said the ice wall was self-sealing, meaning that if another earthquake caused cracks, any incoming water would freeze right away, restoring the wall. He also said it would take months for the wall to thaw, giving engineers ample time to restore power even if the plant has another outage.
Mr. Abe said the wall was intended to operate until 2021, giving Tepco five more years to find and plug the holes in the reactor buildings, though skeptics say this difficult task will require more time. Mr. Abe also pointed out that the ice wall was part of a broader strategy for containing the radioactive water. Before installing the ice wall, Kajima also built a conventional steel wall underground along the plant’s border with the Pacific last year.
Tepco says that wall has already stopped all measurable leaks of radioactive materials into the sea. However, some scientists say that radioactive water may still be seeping through layers of permeable rock that lie deep below the plant, emptying into the Pacific far offshore. They say the only way to eliminate all leaks would be to repair the buildings once and for all.
Even if the ice wall works, Tepco will face the herculean task of dealing with the huge amounts of contaminated water that have accumulated. The company has installed filtering systems that can remove all nuclear particles but one, a radioactive form of hydrogen known as tritium. The central government and Tepco have yet to figure out what to do with the tritium-laced water; proposals to dilute and dump it into the Pacific have met with resistance from local fishermen, and risk an international backlash.
For now, the only visible sign that the freezing has begun are silver-dollar-size patches of ice that have formed on top of the aboveground, silver pipes. At one spot, the No. 4 reactor building loomed, an enormous cube six stories tall with concrete sides that showed large gashes left by the tsunami.
“The water is here, just three meters beneath our feet,” said Mr. Okamura, the Tepco general manager, who stood near the pipes wearing a white protective suit, goggles and a surgical mask. “It still flows into the building, unseen, without stopping.”
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Citizen science takes on Japan's nuclear establishment.
As other Tokyo office workers poured into restaurants and bars at quitting time one recent evening, Kohei Matsushita went to the eighth floor of a high-rise for an unusual after-hours activity: learning how to assemble his own Geiger counter from a kit.
Joe Moross, center, and Pieter Franken, right, teach Kohei Matsushita how to assemble one of Safecast's Geiger counter kits at the group's Tokyo office on July 6, 2016. (Julie Makinen / Los Angeles Times)
Julie Makinen
As other Tokyo office workers poured into restaurants and bars at quitting time one recent evening, Kohei Matsushita went to the eighth floor of a high-rise for an unusual after-hours activity: learning how to assemble his own Geiger counter from a kit.
Hunched over a circuit board, the 37-year-old practiced his soldering technique as Joe Moross, a former L.A. resident with a background in radiation detection, explained how to fit together about $500 worth of components – including a sensor, circuit board, digital display, GPS module, battery and case.
“My family has a house near a nuclear power plant,” Matsushita said, explaining his motivation. “I want to take this there and collect data, and contribute to this pool of information.”
“This pool” is a stunning set of data – 50 million readings and counting, all logged and mapped on a website anyone can see – collected by volunteers with self-built equipment. Known as Safecast, the group was founded just days after the massive earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdown that shocked Japan in March 2011.
Though the immediate threat of radiation from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant has waned, interest in Safecast’s data has not. The organization, which takes no position on nuclear power, is supported by foundations, grants and individual donations.
Part of the growing movement known as citizen science, the idea is to give people the knowledge and the tools to better understand their environment, and make more informed decisions based on accurate information.
Trust in both nuclear power plant operators and the government has not fully recovered since the disaster. As authorities push ahead with the contentious process of restarting dozens of nuclear reactors taken off-line in wake of the disaster, Japanese like Matsushita say a network of monitors controlled by ordinary people could serve as an early warning system in the event of another disaster.
Meanwhile, as Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s administration continues with its extensive effort to decontaminate areas around Fukushima Daiichi and reopen evacuated towns and villages, potential returnees say they want a way to verify official numbers that indicate radiation really has dropped to safe levels.
“They want people to come back, but there’s no decontamination in the forest areas and those cover 75% of this village,” says retired engineer Nobuyoshi Ito, 72, who in 2010 opened an eco-farm retreat in Iitate, about 20 miles southeast of the nuclear power plant. Recently, he had Safecast install a radiation monitor at the retreat, which is still in a restricted zone. “We have to check ourselves.”
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Joe Moross straps a GPS-enabled Geiger counter the size of a small brick to the back window of his red station wagon on the outskirts of Tokyo and begins a 16-hour day driving north through the most contaminated areas around the Fukushima nuclear plant. In the last five years, he calculates he’s driven 90,000 miles gathering data for Safecast.
Joe Moross has driven 90,000 miles gathering data for Safecast. A Geiger counter equipped with a GPS module hangs from the back window of his station wagon.
Joe Moross has driven 90,000 miles gathering data for Safecast. A Geiger counter equipped with a GPS module hangs from the back window of his station wagon. (Julie Makinen / Los Angeles Times)
Through a Bluetooth connection, he can monitor the Geiger counter’s readings on his cellphone as he goes. But he also keeps a mental log of more qualitative signs of the region’s transformation.
“That 7-Eleven reopened in 2014,” he notes as he nears the town of Tomioka. “That Family Mart came back in 2015.” In the town of Naraha, he gasps. “That’s the first rice growing in the fields here in five years!”
Along the way, he passes several dozen fixed-point radiation monitors installed by the government along the roadsides. Their solar-powered, digital displays provide readouts in microsieverts per hour (μSv/hr); today’s show relatively low readings from 0.1 to 3.8 between the towns of Hirono and Minamisoma. That is less than what one would be exposed to on a long flight, although that exposure lasts only as long as the flight.
A roadside sign installed by the Japanese government south of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant displays radiation readings.
A roadside sign installed by the Japanese government south of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant displays radiation readings. (Julie Makinen / Los Angeles Times)
Moross’ much more granular, mobile data, recorded every five seconds and uploaded to the Web the next day, generally matches the government signs, though when passing near the Fukushima plant, Moross’ counter produces readings above 4 μSv/hr. (Not long after the disaster, Safecast found readings higher than 30 in the region).
In the town of Iwaki, Moross drops in on Brett Waterman, a 51-year-old Australian who’s been teaching English in the area for 11 years and was having some technical issues with a Safecast monitor.
“Like most people, I knew nothing about radiation” when the disaster hit, says Waterman, who acquired an early Safecast Geiger counter through Kickstarter and has since upgraded to more sophisticated models as the group has refined its designs. Waterman says the data indicate Iwaki is now safe, but it’s important to keep generating frequent readings to provide a reference of what’s “normal” in case circumstances change.
Safecast holds regular sessions for adults to teach them to assemble their own devices and is planning a kids’ workshop as well. Plans and directions for building the devices are also available online for free. Organizers say that people who build their own monitors are much more motivated to use them.
“If they just buy one, they may use it once, throw it in a drawer and never upload any data,” says Moross. “If they make it themselves, they’re more invested.”
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Safecast’s tiny Tokyo office feels like a combination tech start-up, old-school shop class, and comedy club for middle-aged expats. As Moross inspects Matsushita’s soldering progress, English teacher Jonathan Wilder, 59, is busy gathering switches, resistors, batteries, and sensors and parceling them out into plastic bags that will become kits for Safecast’s current workhorse Geiger counter, known as the bGeigie Nano.
Moross and Wilder trade jokes as Azby Brown, 60, an expert on traditional Japanese architecture, sits at another table typing up news for the group’s blog; he has just led Safecast’s efforts to publish its first scientific paper, in the Journal of Radiological Protection. Pieter Franken, a Dutch expatriate and chief technology officer for a large securities firm, looks over some materials for the group’s upcoming kids’ workshop.
“Safecast is an interesting social experiment, in a fairly anarchistic kind of way,” says Franken, one of the group’s founders. “It taps into trends including maker-spaces, the Internet of things and even artists. We attract people who want to break out of the traditional way of solving problems.”
Safecast grew out of an email conversation among Franken, L.A.-based tech entrepreneur Sean Bonner and MIT Media Lab director Joichi “Joi” Ito immediately after the March 11, 2011, disaster. As the Fukushima crisis unfolded, Safecast’s effort to produce and distribute Geiger counters and collect data snowballed, drawing in more expertise and volunteers. The group has successively iterated smaller and smaller Geiger counters with more functionality for data collection.
In the last five years, Safecast volunteers have taken radiation readings all over the world, from Brisbane, Australia, to Santa Monica. The group is also working on monitoring air quality in Los Angeles and elsewhere; recently, volunteers took methane readings around Porter Ranch during the gas leak there. Now, Safecast is trying to figure out how to depict that kind of data meaningfully online.
Moross says the potential applications for citizen-based environmental monitoring are vast, pointing to incidents such as the recent scandal over the lead-tainted water supply in Flint, Mich., as an example of where deeper community-based scientific knowledge could have improved debate and policymaking.
“Flint and Fukushima have parallels,” says Moross. “Democracy should start from facts, and we need to give citizens facts to understand what’s happening.”
Safecast has taken heat from both pro- and anti-nuclear activists, Brown says. “But if people spend some time with us, they find we are valuable.” Even Japan’s postal service has cooperated with Safecast, putting its monitors on carriers’ motorbikes in some towns and gathering data.
Safecast’s goal now is, essentially, “base-lining the world,” says Franken, crowdsourcing environmental data from every corner of the Earth.
“We should start with measuring our environments,” he says. “Then we can talk about things like global warming and air pollution; from there, activism can start. Once you know, for example, that your street is polluted, you can start to make a change. That’s where we can make a difference.”
julie.makinen@latimes.com
Follow me on Twitter @JulieMakLAT.
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Utilities reject shareholders' call to abandon nuclear power.
Japan’s nine major electric power companies shot down renewed proposals calling for them to end their dependence on nuclear energy at their annual shareholders’ meetings on June 28.
Japan’s nine major electric power companies shot down renewed proposals calling for them to end their dependence on nuclear energy at their annual shareholders’ meetings on June 28.
The top executives of each utility again stressed the importance of nuclear power and indicated that they plan to resume such operations at their plants as soon as possible.
At the Tokyo Electric Power Co. shareholders’ meeting, President Naomi Hirose apologized for his predecessor’s instruction to employees to avoid using the term “meltdown” during the early phases of the March 2011 disaster at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant.
“I sincerely apologize for causing concerns,” Hirose said in responding to a question from a shareholder. “I promise that we will never impose silence on our employees under any circumstances.”
TEPCO described the condition of the Fukushima reactors as suffering less serious "core damage" for two months after the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami crippled the plant.
Seventy-three motions from shareholders were submitted at the meetings of the nine utilities. Many called on the companies to end nuclear power generation.
However, since proposals require approval by a two-thirds majority of the voting rights of participating shareholders for passage, all were rejected.
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