TEPCO Admits Contaminated Water Leaked Into Fukushima Groundwater "Due To Erroneous Gauges"

In a revelation that, for some, will dredge up memories of TEPCO’s stunning admission back in 2013 that nearly 300 tonnes of radioactive material had leaked from the ruins of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear-power plant into the water outside, contaminating virtually the entire Pacific Ocean, officials at the Japanese power company told the Associated Press that contaminated water may have leaked into the soil surrounding the plant after human error caused safety mechanisms to fail.

TEPCO officials said the settings on six of the dozens of wells surrounding the plant’s ruined reactors were accidentally set 70 centimeters below the required levels, briefly causing groundwater at one well to sink below the contaminated water inside in May, possibly allowing radioactive water to leak into the soil.

Fortunately, groundwater samples have shown no abnormal increase in radioactivity and leaks to the outside are unlikely, according to TEPCO spokesman Shinichi Nakakuki.

The problem with the wells – most of which were drilled in April to help pump groundwater, reducing the possibility that it would be exposed to contamination -  was discovered earlier this week while the company was preparing to drill another well. While Tepco maintained several wells around the plant before the disaster, many more have been drilled since to try and stanch the flow of radioactive materials from the plant.

It has been six-and-a-half years since a massive earthquake and tsunami critically damaged the Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear-power plant, located about 200 miles away from Tokyo, triggering the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl – and the Japanese people are still uncovering new evidence of TEPCO"s dishonesty and incompetence demonstrated during the aftermath of the disaster.

Of course, while the coverup was happening, few in the media dared to entertain suspicions that the company might be acting in bad faith – after all, what serious organization would so brazenly defy the public’s trust, not to mention local laws?

But five years later, those conspiracy theories were transformed into conspiracy facts when TEPCO’s then-President Naomi Hirose admitted last year on NHK that his company intentionally concealed the reactor meltdowns at the Fukushima plant immediately after the storm. The power company didn"t officially admit the meltdowns until more than 2 months after the accident.

"I would say it was a cover-up," Hirose said during a news conference. "It"s extremely regrettable."  

Earlier this year, TEPCO ignited a public controversy after sharing its plans to start pumping radioactive water contaminated with tritium into the Pacific Ocean – a tactic that has met with vociferous opposition from Japan’s fishing industry.

Tepco has claimed that the radioactive water, pumped from inside the three reactors that melted down following the tsunami, would quickly disperse and not pose a threat to marine life. With the cleanup effort expected to take decades (although we imagine that President Shino Abe would like to accomplish as much as possible before the 2020 Olympics, which will be held in Tokyo), TEPCO has this year dispatched robots into the reactors to try and find the damaged nuclear core material, to mixed results.

Back in February, TEPCO revealed that it had discovered a hole at least one square meter in size beneath the pressure vessel in the plant’s damaged No. 2 reactor, potentially exposing the surrounding area to record-high radiation. Back in 2011, radiation levels of 530 Sieverts per hour had been detected inside the reactor (8 Sieverts is enough to kill a human).

These reports should be particularly dismaying for the thousands of Japanese who’ve begun returning to their homes inside the exclusion zone after the Japanese government ended its subsidy payments to disaster victims earlier this year, effectively forcing many of them to choose between financial hardship or living in a home they believe to be unsafe.

Meanwhile, photos taken earlier this year by journalists who traveled inside the Fukushima exclusion zone – a 20 kilometer perimeter around the plant - depicted a “nuclear nightmare” consisting of eerie ghost villages populated by radioactive wild boars...

…not exactly the kind of place we’d want to raise our kids.
 

Fukushima's "Swimming Robot" Captures First Images Of 'Massive Deposits' Of Melted Nuclear Fuel

The “Little Sunfish,” the swimming robot that TEPCO is using to capture images of the containment vessel in the Unit 3 reactor of the ruined Fukushima power plant, has brought back the goods.

A trove of new images captured in the past few days show what is likely to be melted nuclear fuel from inside the reactor, what Bloomberg describes as a “potential milestone” in the cleanup of one of the worst atomic disasters in history.

The pictures show what looks to be the melted nuclear fuel that caused the worst-ever nuclear disaster when northeastern Japan was hit by a massive earthquake and tsunami in March 2011. If confirmed, these would be the first discovery of the fuel, which is being sought by TEPCO as part of the cleanup effort.

“Tokyo Electric Power Co. Holdings Inc., Japan’s biggest utility, released images on Saturday of mounds of black rock and sand-like substances at the bottom of the No. 3 reactor containment vessel at Fukushima, which is likely to contain melted fuel, according to Takahiro Kimoto, an official at the company. A survey on Friday found black icicles hanging from the above pressure vessel, which was “highly likely” to contain melted fuel. Kimoto noted it would take time to confirm whether this debris contains melted fuel.

"The pictures that we have gained will assist us in devising a plan for removing the melted fuel," Kimoto told reporters Saturday night in Tokyo. "Taking pictures of how debris scattered inside of the reactor was a big accomplishment."

If confirmed, these pictures would be the first discovery of the fuel that melted during the triple reactor accident at Fukushima six years ago. For Tokyo Electric, which bears most of the cleanup costs, the discovery would help the utility design a way to remove the highly-radioactive material.”

The pictures were taken by the “Little Sunfish,” the Toshiba-designed robot the company sent into the destroyed reactors to explore the inside of the reactor for the first time from July 19. The robot, 30 centimeters (12 inches) long that can swim in the flooded unit, was tasked with surveying the damage inside and also finding the location of corium, which is a mixture of the atomic fuel rods and other structural materials that forms after a meltdown.

“It is important to know the exact locations and the physical, chemical, radiological forms of the corium to develop the necessary engineering defueling plans for the safe removal of the radioactive materials,” said Lake Barrett, a former official at the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission who was involved with the cleanup at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in the U.S.

“The recent investigation results are significant early signs of progress on the long road ahead.”

Until now, TEPCO hasn’t managed to find the melted fuel, presenting a major obstacle in the cleanup effort, where the removal of the fuel is considered one of the most difficult steps. Sightings of what was believed to be the destroyed fuel in reactors No. 1 and No.2 proved to be inaccurate.

“Similar to the latest findings in the No. 3 reactor, Tepco took photographs in January of what appeared to be black residue covering a grate under the Fukushima Dai-Ichi No. 2 reactor, which was speculated to have been melted fuel. However, a follow-up survey by another Toshiba-designed robot in February failed to confirm the location of any melted fuel in the reactor after it got stuck in debris.

A robot designed by Hitachi-GE Nuclear Energy Ltd. also failed to find any melted fuel during its probe of the No. 1 reactor in March.”

The significance of the recent finding “might be evidence that the robots used by TEPCO can now deal with the higher radiation levels, at least for periods of time that allow them to search parts of the reactor that are more likely to contain fuel debris,” M.V. Ramana, professor at the Liu Institute for Global Issues at the University of British Columbia, said by email.

“If some of these fragments can be brought out of the reactor and studied, it would allow nuclear engineers and scientists to better model what happened during the accident.”

According to Bloomberg, because of the high radioactivity levels inside the reactor, only specially designed robots can probe the unit. And the unprecedented nature of the Fukushima disaster means that the utility is pinning its efforts on technology not yet invented to get the melted fuel out of the reactors.

The budget for the cleanup, which is still running behind schedule, has more than doubled to a whopping $188 billion last year. TEPCO has also not been able to decide on what to do with the 777,000 tons of water contaminated with tritium when it was used to cool down the plant’s cores, and has petitioned Japan’s government to allow it to dump some of the water into the Pacific. According to the officials, tritium is not harmful in small doses. It’s believed that the decommissioning of the reactors will cost 8 trillion yen ($72 billion), according to an estimate in December from the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, and take as long as 40 years.

TEPCO Sacrifices Another "Swimming Robot" At Fukushima: Still "No Sign Of Melted Nuclear Core"

While Elon Musk is fearful of the future of AI and robots destroying man, it appears the Japanese are taking the battle to the robots as they send a third "swimming" robot into the destroyed Fukushima reactors in search of the melted nuclear core material.

As Valuewalk.com"s Aman Jain writes, a swimming robot showed just how bad the damage at Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plant is.

The robot dubbed “the Little Sunfish” went inside the factory and captured images of the containment vessel in the Unit 3 reactor, which was swept away by the massive earthquake and tsunami in March 2011.

No signs of melted nuclear fuel yet

Toshiba Corp., the company which has been given the responsibility of cleaning the plant, has co-developed the swimming robot with the International Research Institute for nuclear decommissioning.

The robot is on a mission to locate the fuel that melted and seeped from the core, falling to the bottom of the primary containment chamber where it was surrounded by highly radioactive water as deep as 6 meters, notes the Review Journal.

The little Sunfish is a small robot which propels around the area and captures data using two cameras and a dosimeter. Further, the robot is controlled by a group of four operators from a remote distance. The robot, which is about the size of a loaf of bread, is connected to data cables all the time. Further, the observations made by the robot are sent back to the team via the data cable.

On Wednesday, plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) spokesman Takahiro Kimoto stated that they had received the first pictures of the underwater damage from the swimming robot, but there is no sign of the melted nuclear fuel that researchers are looking for.

In a late night news conference, Kimoto said, “The damage to the structures was caused by the melted fuel or its heat.”

Inside the plant, the robot was placed near the structure known as the pedestal, from where it went further in search of more information and the possibility of stumbling upon the melted fuel.

Third attempt using the swimming robot

The Tohoku earthquake and tsunami in 2011, which killed more than 18,000 people, also damaged the power plant in Fukushima, making it the largest nuclear accident since Chernobyl. There have been a couple of attempts to explore the first and the second reactor, but the robots could not pass through. They either got stuck or swallowed by the excessive radiation still present inside the plant. However, the Little Sunfish gave a glimpse of the badly damaged number 3 reactor.

Meanwhile, the budget allocated to the exploration and clean-up process more than doubled to a whopping $188 billion last year, but the agenda is still running behind schedule. TEPCO has also not been able to decide on what to do with the 777,000 tons of water contaminated with tritium when it was used to cool down the plant’s cores.

Earlier, TEPCO Chairman Takashi Kawamura stated that there is only one solution left, which calls for dumping the water tanks into the Pacific Ocean. According to the officials, tritium is not harmful in small doses, but local activists and fisherman said that this will a create another negative impression about the country’s environmental commitments, which are already not in a good place as it deals with the horrible nuclear disaster.

Locals Furious At Plan To Dump Radioactive Water From Fukushima Into Pacific Ocean

In the latest sign that the area surrounding the destroyed Fukushima power plant is far from ready for the return of human inhabitants, locals and fishing groups are criticizing a plan to release water containing radioactive tritium from the ruined Fukushima power plant into the ocean, according to the Telegraph. Officials of Tokyo Electric Power Co., the operator of the plant, say tritium poses little risk to human health and is quickly diluted by the ocean. But for some, the plan undoubtedly dredges up uncomfortable memories from 2013, when it was revealed that 300 tonnes of radioactive material had been leaking into the Pacific Ocean from the devastated plant every day. It was also revealed that TEPCO had known about the leaks, but had tried to cover them up.

TEPCO has been tasked with decommissioning the plant, and has been using robots to find and clean the melted nuclear fuel debris that is believed to be creating exorbitant levels of radiation in the area surrounding the plant. Though the company had to pull some of its robots out in February after radiation reached such high levels that not even machinery could function correctly, according to the International Business Times.

In March 2011, a magnitude 9 undersea megaquake triggered a massive tsunami that battered coastal North Eastern Japan, and triggered the level seven meltdowns of three nuclear reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant, and the evacuation of 160,000 residents and the implementation of a 310 square mile uninhabitable zone. The quake was the worst to ever hit Japan, and it caused the worst nuclear disaster the world had seen since Ukraine’s Chernobyl meltdown in 1986. The three reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant melted down when the tsunami caused a blackout at the plant that shut off its cooling systems.

Six years after the disaster, some residents are beginning to return as the Japanese government prepares to lift restrictions on four towns in the affected area. But a completed cleanup effort could take decades, and the government must still find a way to exterminate the radioactive boars that have overrun the area.

Takashi Kawamura, chairman of TEPCO, told local media "The decision has already been made” regarding the tritium infused water. He added, however, that the utility is waiting for approval from the Japanese government before going ahead with the plan and is seeking the understanding of local residents.

The tritium is building up in water that has been used to cool three reactors that suffered fuel melt-downs after cooling equipment was destroyed during the earthquake and tsunami. Around 770,000 tons of highly radioactive water is being stored in 580 tanks at the site. Many of the contaminants can be filtered out, but the technology does not presently exist to remove tritium from water.

Environmental activist say dumping the tritium-infused water is part of a pattern of negligence on the part of TEPCO stretching back to before the earthquake even happened, when the company failed to take proper precautions to reinforce the cooling systems at the plants’ reactors.

"This accident happened more than six years ago and the authorities should have been able to devise a way to remove the tritium instead of simply announcing that they are going to dump it into the ocean", said Aileen Mioko-Smith, an anti-nuclear campaigner with Kyoto-based Green Action Japan.

"They say that it will be safe because the ocean is large so it will be diluted, but that sets a precedent that can be copied, essentially permitting anyone to dump nuclear waste into our seas", she told The Telegraph.

Fishermen who operate in waters off the plant say the release of any radioactive material will devastate their industry, which is still struggling to recover from the initial nuclear disaster, according to the Telegraph.

"Releasing [tritium] into the sea will create a new wave of unfounded rumours, making all our efforts for naught", Kanji Tachiya, head of a local fishing cooperative, told Kyodo News.
 

The Robots Sent Into Fukushima Just Keep Dying

Via Yvette Tan of Mashable.com,

The robots sent in to investigate the nuclear fallout at Fukushima just aren"t good enough.

 

Tokyo Electric Power Company"s (TEPCO) head of decommissioning admitted on Thursday that more creativity was needed in developing its robots sent to the reactive zone.

The Fukushima nuclear power plant was massively damaged in 2011, when three of the six nuclear reactors suffered meltdown after being struck by a 9.0-magnitude earthquake and associated tsunami waves.

More than 100,000 residents of the nearby Fukushima Prefecture had to be relocated, and the government has spent the last five years struggling with the aftermath. The incident is regarded as the world"s largest nuclear disaster since Chernobyl.

Part of the clean-up includes robots, sent in to probe the site, because radiation levels are too high for humans.

But earlier last month, a robot sent into Fukushima"s No. 2 reactor was forced to abort its mission after it was blocked by deposits — believed to be a mixture of melted fuel and broken pieces of structure.

Two previous robots had also failed in its missions after one was stuck in a gap and another was abandoned after being unable to find fuel during six days of searching.

This is an example of one of the robots TEPCO had sent to probe the area in the past.

"We should think out of the box so we can examine the bottom of the core and how melted fuel debris spread out," TEPCO Head of Decommissioning Naohiro Masuda said.

Mr Masuda also added that he wants another robot sent in before deciding on methods to remove the reactor"s debris.

Despite the failed probe missions, officials have added that they want to stick to their schedule of starting the site clean up in 2021. 

Decommissioning the site is expected to cost tens of billions of dollars and last around 40 years.

Fukushima"s No. 2 reactor was found in February to have a radiation level of 530 sieverts.

Exposure to four sieverts is enough to be lethal, according to the National Institute of Radiological Sciences.

South Korea"s low-cost carrier Jeju Air also announced on Tuesday that it would not use Fukushima Airport due to fears of radiation.

Some of its customers had reportedly posted online that they would not use the airline because they didn"t want to "board airplanes that flew over Fukushima."

TEPCO Admits Fukushima Radiation Levels Reach Record Highs As Hole In Reactor Discovered

With just 3 years left until the 2020 Olympics, Japan is likely desperate to reassure the world"s athletes that all is well, but an admission from TEPCO - the Fukushima nuclear plant operator - that they discovered a hole at least one square meter in size beneath the reactor"s pressure vessel, and lethal record-high radiation levels have been detected, will not likely reassure anyone.

Radiation levels of up to 530 Sieverts per hour were detected inside an inactive Reactor 2 at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex damaged during the 2011 earthquake and tsunami catastrophe, Japanese media reported on Thursday citing the plant operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO). A dose of about 8 Sieverts is considered incurable and fatal.

As RT reports, a hole of no less than one square meter in size has also been discovered beneath the reactor"s pressure vessel, TEPCO said. According to researchers, the apparent opening in the metal grating of one of three reactors that had melted down in 2011, is believed to be have been caused by melted nuclear fuel that fell through the vessel.

The iron scaffolding has a melting point of 1500 degrees, TEPCO said, explaining that there is a possibility the fuel debris has fallen onto it and burnt the hole. Such fuel debris have been discovered on equipment at the bottom of the pressure vessel just above the hole, it added.

The latest findings were released after a recent camera probe inside the reactor, TEPCO said. Using a remote-controlled camera fitted on a long pipe, scientists managed to get images of hard-to-reach places where residual nuclear material remained. The substance there is so toxic that even specially-made robots designed to probe the underwater depths beneath the power plant have previously crumbled and shut down.

However, TEPCO still plans to launch further more detailed assessments at the damaged nuclear facility with the help of self-propelled robots.

TEPCO confirmed a black lump in the space beneath the pressure vessel. There is a possibility of nuclear fuel melting down (fuel debris). If it is fuel debris, it will be the first time that fuel melted down will be taken after the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident.