Thousands evacuate as Fukishima nuclear emergency is declared

[Magda Hassan]

Japanese Government Delayed Nuclear Emergency Measures to Protect TEPCO Profits




by Mike Head

It is now clear that Prime Minister Naoto Kan's government and the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), which owns the stricken Fukushima Daiichi plant, delayed essential measures to tackle the emergency at the facility in order to protect TEPCO's investments. There is also mounting evidence that joint government-TEPCO cover-ups have continued throughout the unfolding crisis.


More than a week after the earthquake and tsunami that hit the country, the situation at the facility remains on a knife edge despite days of desperate fire-hosing, water-bombing and other activities that have exposed the plant workers and fire fighters to extreme radioactivity levels.


Nuclear experts warned that the restoration of power to some Fukushima units on Sunday and the reported placing of two other reactors into "cold shutdown" did not necessarily end the dangers. "Overall, the situation remains very serious," the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said at a media conference yesterday.


The Wall Street Journal reported on the weekend that TEPCO had considered using sea water to cool one of the plant's six reactors as early as the morning of March 12, the day after the quake struck, but delayed until that evening and did not use seawater at other reactors for another day. The company's concern was to protect its long-term investment in the Fukushima complex, because seawater can corrode a nuclear reactor, rendering it permanently inoperable.


TEPCO "hesitated because it tried to protect its assets," Akira Omoto, a former TEPCO executive and member of the Japan Atomic Energy Commission, told the financial newspaper. A government official stated: "This disaster is 60 percent man-made. They failed in their initial response. It's like TEPCO dropped and lost a 100 yen coin while trying to pick up a 10 yen coin."


Because the government was committed to leaving the emergency response in the hands of the private ownerthe fourth largest power company in the worldofficial efforts were also critically delayed. Fire-fighting and military resources were not utilised in the cool-down operations in a substantial manner until last Wednesday, after four of the six reactors had already suffered damage and the remaining two showed signs of heating. A military spokesman said forces did not move in because they were not requested by TEPCO.


Other evidence indicated that the Fukushima complex had already been disabled by the magnitude-9 earthquake before the tsunami flooded the backup generators. Kazuma Yokota, a safety inspector for Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) who was in the plant when the quake struck, told the Wall Street Journal that he ducked under a desk as the initial shock cracked the walls. The inspector then moved to his monitoring office, a 15-minute drive away. "There was no power, no phone, no fax, no Internet," he said.


These power and communication failures show that the plant was not built to withstand a major earthquake, despite years of assurances to the contrary by TEPCO and successive Japanese governments. Yet TEPCO remains in control of the response, just as BP was left in charge of last year's Gulf of Mexico oil spill disaster.


Yesterday, TEPCO reported a spike in pressure in a holding vessel around reactor 3which contains highly toxic plutoniumforcing engineers to consider releasing more radioactive material into the atmosphere. Officials warned that the release would be larger than in the previous explosions during the week because more nuclear fuel had degraded. They said the process would involve the emission of a cloud dense with iodine, krypton and xenon.


Later in the day, TEPCO temporarily suspended the venting plan. Hikaru Kuroda, a TEPCO manager, said temperatures inside the reactor had reached 300 degrees Centigrade but had "stabilised" after seawater was continuously pumped in.


On Saturday, the dangers to human health were underscored when Japan's health ministry reported that an abnormal amount of a radioactive material was detected in spinach grown about 110 kilometres northeast of Tokyo. The material, iodine-131, was also detected in milk from a dairy farm about 50 kilometres from the plant. Later, the science ministry said a radioactive substance had been detected in tap water in Tokyo and five nearby prefectures.


Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano, the government's spokesman, insisted that the amounts of material detected would not immediately affect human health, but experts warned that even traces of radiation could harm children. IAEA official Gerhard Proehl told a Vienna news conference that iodine-131 levels in the milk were up to 15 times the level suitable for infants.


News of the contamination heightened the concerns among ordinary people that the government had failed to issue timely and complete information from the outset of the nuclear disaster. "The biggest problem is that we're not getting the whole picture from the government, from the media," Takamasa Edogawa, 76, told the Los Angeles Times as he waited in a line outside a Tokyo supermarket.


Mayumi Mizutani, who was shopping for bottled water, told the Associated Press she was worried about the health of her visiting two-year-old grandchild after radioactive iodine was found in Tokyo's tap water. She expressed fears that the infant could get cancer. "That's why I'm going to use this water as much as possible," she said.


Further evidence has emerged of the culpability of TEPCO and the government for this catastrophe. Officials have admitted that they gave potassium iodide, which helps reduce the risk of throat cancer, to people living within a 20 kilometre-radius of Fukushima only three days after an explosion that should have triggered an immediate distribution. Kazuma Yokota, a safety official, said: "We should have made this decision and announced it sooner. It is true that we had not foreseen a disaster of these proportions."


TEPCO submitted a report to NISA, the safety regulator, 10 days before the quake hit on March 11 admitting that it had failed to inspect 33 pieces of equipment in its six Fukushima reactors. Inspectors had faked records for up to 11 years, pretending to make thorough inspections when in fact they were only cursory, TEPCO said. Inspections, which were voluntary, also did not cover other devices related to cooling systems, including water pump motors and diesel generators.


"Long-term inspection plans and maintenance management were inadequate," NISA concluded in a report two days after TEPCO's admission. Nevertheless, the agency gave TEPCO until June 2 to draw up a corrective plan. A NISA official who declined to be named told Agence France-Presse: "We can't say that the lapses listed in the (February 28) report did not have an influence on the chain of events leading to this crisis."


It is now clear that TEPCO's decades-long record of flouting elementary safety requirements, falsifying reports to regulators and covering up potential nuclear disasters, with the assistance of one government after another, continued right up to the Fukushima catastrophe.


This is despite supposed government intervention on previous occasions, including in 2002, when TEPCO admitted fabricating more than 200 safety reports dating back to 1993, and in 2007, when a much smaller 6.8-magnitude earthquake shut down TEPCO's seven-reactor Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear plant, the world's biggest, and more radiation leaked than TEPCO initially acknowledged (see: "Japan's TEPCO: a history of nuclear disaster cover-ups").


Repeated attempts by TEPCO and the Kan government to play down the significance of the crisis over the past week have proven to be equally misleading. Three explosions over three days in reactors No. 1, No. 2 and No. 3 were followed by two fires in the fuel pool of reactor No. 4. By mid-week, TEPCO and the government were forced to resort to untested methods, sending helicopters to water-bomb the reactors and fire trucks to help pump seawater into them.


The disorganised and contemptuous character of the official response was further evidenced by reports that the company had agreed with Kan during the week that 180 workers would remain in the plant, working in shifts to prevent a meltdown. TEPCO is known to employ unqualified day labourers, earning just 9,000 yen ($US113) a day, who have little knowledge of the plant's technology and dangers.


The 180 have all received significant doses of radiation that will inevitably damage their long-term health. Already, two are missing, presumed dead, 21 have reportedly been injured or taken to hospital, and 19 have been treated on site for radiation exposure.


According to the Mainichi Shimbun newspaper, TEPCO asked the government to permit a full withdrawal of the last workers from the plant because of high levels of radiation. Kan, however, told TEPCO: "Withdrawal is impossible. It's not a matter of whether TEPCO collapses. It's a matter of whether Japan goes wrong."


These revelations illustrate the readiness of the entire Japanese ruling elite to sacrifice the lives, health and safety of ordinary working people not only to safeguard the profits and investments of its giant power utilities, but also to maintain a central axis of its strategic and economic strategythe pursuit of nuclear energy.


Even though Japan is one of the most earthquake- and tsunami-prone areas of the world, more than 55 nuclear reactors have been built since 1970, including seven new ones opened in 2008. These reactors, which now provide 34.5 percent of the country's electricity, are regarded as a "lifeline" to shield the Japanese business and military establishment from denial of access to global oil and gas supplies.


Across Japan, there is also growing distress over the escalating toll from the tsunami disaster. The national police agency said 8,450 people had been confirmed dead and 12,931 were officially listed as missinga total of 21,381as of last night. But this figure is sure to rise.


Miyagi police chief Naoto Takeuchi told a task force meeting yesterday that his prefecture alone "will need to secure facilities to keep the bodies of more than 15,000 people," Jiji Press reported.


The whereabouts of nearly 19,000 people are still unknown, according to figures compiled by the Asahi Shimbun. The casualty figure does not include those who died at evacuation centres or medical facilities where victims were transported. At least 25 people have died in evacuation centres in Fukushima alone.


Mike Head is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Mike Head
http://www.politicalfailblog.com/2011/03...clear.html

[Peter Lemkin]

Levels 100X higher than permissible were admitted to have been found in fish in the area of the plant. Again, not surprising, as the wind has been blowing that-a-way, plus all the run off from the water sprayed on the plant, which is directly on the ocean.......while the ocean is a BIG place and it will dissipate, much in the area will be getting quite a dose - and much of the fishing is done just offshore, the fish and other sealife most affected. :popworm: One would expect those levels to rise further and I don't know if we are being told the truth or not.... It seems it is both the 'desire' to not cause alarm among the Sheeple and also another case of Profits before People.

NB. Reactor 3 is getting hotter and hotter...and steam is coming out, despite the water put on it [boiling off]. this reactor is the only one that has plutonium in the fuel rods....so the most dangerous one on the grounds....

Close-up aerial photos of the plant's reactors shows quite a lot of damage and most of the reactors totally open to the sky....nice!:joystick:

[Peter Lemkin]

'They' now say that all six reactors have been re-connected to the electric grid [without saying if the power can run the broken and damaged cooling systems]. Reactors #2 and 3 are still at great risk, with increasing temperatures and visible plumes rising from them [radiation is invisible, but a visible plume from a reactor always carries radiation within it!]. Reactor 3 is the the most problematic [and therefore not surprisingly] the ONLY one with plutonium, rather than uranium fuel pellets. While the Japanese authorities paint a picture of having now gotten the plant under control, I am NOT convinced. The next three days will tell.

[Peter Lemkin]

Reactor #3 seems to be the MOST dangerous still. Black smoke was seen coming from it, and the plant was evacuated......awaiting word on what was happening...but certainly nothing good!....

[Peter Lemkin]

For the first time, smoke is also coming out of Reactor #1...so smoke or steam or both is coming up off of most all of Reactors 1-4. Amazingly, they claim not to know WHY they are doing this, nor WHAT is causing it!..... Three workers were rushed to the hospital yesterday. Little information on this too. Obviously, large amounts of radiation continues to come out of the reactors and into the environment.....despite all their pathetic actions, to date.

[Peter Lemkin]

Interview with Hirosh Takashi, author of many books on the nuclear industry

Yoh: Tepco [Tokyo Electric Power Company, owner/operator of the nuclear plants] says they expect to bring in a high voltage line this evening.

Hirose: Yes, there's a little bit of hope there. But what's worrisome is that a nuclear reactor is not like what the schematic pictures show (shows a graphic picture of a reactor, like those used on TV). This is just a cartoon. Here's what it looks like underneath a reactor container (shows a photograph). This is the butt end of the reactor. Take a look. It's a forest of switch levers and wires and pipes. On television these pseudo-scholars come on and give us simple explanations, but they know nothing, those college professors. Only the engineers know. This is where water has been poured in. This maze of pipes is enough to make you dizzy. Its structure is too wildly complex for us to understand. For a week now they have been pouring water through there. And it's salt water, right? You pour salt water on a hot kiln and what do you think happens? You get salt. The salt will get into all these valves and cause them to freeze. They won't move. This will be happening everywhere. So I can't believe that it's just a simple matter of you reconnecting the electricity and the water will begin to circulate. I think any engineer with a little imagination can understand this. You take a system as unbelievably complex as this and then actually dump water on it from a helicopter maybe they have some idea of how this could work, but I can't understand it.

Yoh: It will take 1300 tons of water to fill the pools that contain the spent fuel rods in reactors 3 and 4. This morning 30 tons. Then the Self Defense Forces are to hose in another 30 tons from five trucks. That's nowhere near enough, they have to keep it up. Is this squirting of water from hoses going to change the situation?

Hirose: In principle, it can't. Because even when a reactor is in good shape, it requires constant control to keep the temperature down to where it is barely safe. Now it's a complete mess inside, and when I think of the 50 remaining operators, it brings tears to my eyes. I assume they have been exposed to very large amounts of radiation, and that they have accepted that they face death by staying there. And how long can they last? I mean, physically. That's what the situation has come to now. When I see these accounts on television, I want to tell them, "If that's what you say, then go there and do it yourself!" Really, they talk this nonsense, trying to reassure everyone, trying to avoid panic. What we need now is a proper panic. Because the situation has come to the point where the danger is real.

If I were Prime Minister Kan, I would order them to do what the Soviet Union did when the Chernobyl reactor blew up, the sarcophagus solution, bury the whole thing under cement, put every cement company in Japan to work, and dump cement over it from the sky. Because you have to assume the worst case. Why? Because in Fukushima there is the Daiichi Plant with six reactors and the Daini Plant with four for a total of ten reactors. If even one of them develops the worst case, then the workers there must either evacuate the site or stay on and collapse. So if, for example, one of the reactors at Daiichi goes down, the other five are only a matter of time. We can't know in what order they will go, but certainly all of them will go. And if that happens, Daini isn't so far away, so probably the reactors there will also go down. Because I assume that workers will not be able to stay there.

I'm speaking of the worst case, but the probability is not low. This is the danger that the world is watching. Only in Japan is it being hidden. As you know, of the six reactors at Daiichi, four are in a crisis state. So even if at one everything goes well and water circulation is restored, the other three could still go down. Four are in crisis, and for all four to be 100 per cent repaired, I hate to say it, but I am pessimistic. If so, then to save the people, we have to think about some way to reduce the radiation leakage to the lowest level possible. Not by spraying water from hoses, like sprinkling water on a desert. We have to think of all six going down, and the possibility of that happening is not low. Everyone knows how long it takes a typhoon to pass over Japan; it generally takes about a week. That is, with a wind speed of two meters per second, it could take about five days for all of Japan to be covered with radiation. We're not talking about distances of 20 kilometers or 30 kilometers or 100 kilometers. It means of course Tokyo, Osaka. That's how fast a radioactive cloud could spread. Of course it would depend on the weather; we can't know in advance how the radiation would be distributed. It would be nice if the wind would blow toward the sea, but it doesn't always do that. Two days ago, on the 15th, it was blowing toward Tokyo. That's how it is. . . .

Yoh: Every day the local government is measuring the radioactivity. All the television stations are saying that while radiation is rising, it is still not high enough to be a danger to health. They compare it to a stomach x-ray, or if it goes up, to a CT scan. What is the truth of the matter?

Hirose: For example, yesterday. Around Fukushima Daiichi Station they measured 400 millisieverts that's per hour. With this measurement (Chief Cabinet Secretary) Edano admitted for the first time that there was a danger to health, but he didn't explain what this means. All of the information media are at fault here I think. They are saying stupid things like, why, we are exposed to radiation all the time in our daily life, we get radiation from outer space. But that's one millisievert per year. A year has 365 days, a day has 24 hours; multiply 365 by 24, you get 8760. Multiply the 400 millisieverts by that, you get 3,500,000 the normal dose. You call that safe? And what media have reported this? None. They compare it to a CT scan, which is over in an instant; that has nothing to do with it. The reason radioactivity can be measured is that radioactive material is escaping. What is dangerous is when that material enters your body and irradiates it from inside. These industry-mouthpiece scholars come on TV and what to they say? They say as you move away the radiation is reduced in inverse ratio to the square of the distance. I want to say the reverse. Internal irradiation happens when radioactive material is ingested into the body. What happens? Say there is a nuclear particle one meter away from you. You breathe it in, it sticks inside your body; the distance between you and it is now at the micron level. One meter is 1000 millimeters, one micron is one thousandth of a millimeter. That's a thousand times a thousand: a thousand squared. That's the real meaning of "inverse ratio of the square of the distance." Radiation exposure is increased by a factor of a trillion. Inhaling even the tiniest particle, that's the danger.

Yoh: So making comparisons with X-rays and CT scans has no meaning. Because you can breathe in radioactive material.

Hirose: That's right. When it enters your body, there's no telling where it will go. The biggest danger is women, especially pregnant women, and little children. Now they're talking about iodine and cesium, but that's only part of it, they're not using the proper detection instruments. What they call monitoring means only measuring the amount of radiation in the air. Their instruments don't eat. What they measure has no connection with the amount of radioactive material.Yoh: So damage from radioactive rays and damage from radioactive material are not the same.

Hirose: If you ask, are any radioactive rays from the Fukushima Nuclear Station here in this studio, the answer will be no. But radioactive particles are carried here by the air. When the core begins to melt down, elements inside like iodine turn to gas. It rises to the top, so if there is any crevice it escapes outside.

Yoh: Is there any way to detect this?

Hirose: I was told by a newspaper reporter that now Tepco is not in shape even to do regular monitoring. They just take an occasional measurement, and that becomes the basis of Edano's statements. You have to take constant measurements, but they are not able to do that. And you need to investigate just what is escaping, and how much. That requires very sophisticated measuring instruments. You can't do it just by keeping a monitoring post. It's no good just to measure the level of radiation in the air. Whiz in by car, take a measurement, it's high, it's low that's not the point. We need to know what kind of radioactive materials are escaping, and where they are going they don't have a system in place for doing that now.

http://counterpunch.org/takashi03222011.html

[Peter Lemkin]

Both reactor core containments of reactors 1 and 3 are believed to be breeched [open/cracked/leaking/melted - they are not saying exactly or don't know exactly]. Far from getting things under control, they [amazingly slowly, but surely] have been degrading day by day. I think at this point they soon have to contemplate entombment [as was done with Chernobyl]. This would involve getting just about every cement producer in Japan to formulate a special radiation-absorbing cement and keep the trucks a comin' and building up a huge sarcophagus of cement around a steel I-beam shell that would have to be pre-built and lowered by helicopter and/or crane over the top and sides....it is soon to be the only option to prevent the radiation from continually coming out. Most of the cores will likely go into meltdown and melt into the crust soon. It is a mess of enormous proportions and I don't think they are doing a very good job of honest disclosure. [Understatement!]

[Peter Lemkin]

New pools of water somewhere in the plant are 10,000X above the danger level [not the normal level]!.....it all looks very ominous. I can think of no easy way to fix a cracked containment vessel....one must either dismantle it and bury it [in this case many of them] or, as above, make a special-concrete sarcophagus. Niether is a good solution, but at this point there ARE no good solutions!.....only flavors of bad ones.

Despite rewiring the heavy high-voltage lines back into the plant NONE of the cooling systems have become operational. Reasons are not being given, but one can assume they have been damaged. These are not the kind of item one goes to the nearest hardware center to get a new one...they are specially built and that takes months. The best they can hope for is that some spare parts they need [and will result in a working pump/cooling system] are available somewhere. However, I think it is a sinking ship that they keep trying to steer....it has no where to go....

TOKYO (AP) - A suspected breach in the reactor at the stricken Fukushima nuclear plant could mean more serious radioactive contamination, Japanese officials revealed Friday, as the prime minister called the country's ongoing fight to stabilize the plant "very grave and serious."

A somber Prime Minister Naoto Kan sounded a pessimistic note at a briefing hours after nuclear safety officials announced what could be a major setback in the urgent mission to stop the plant from leaking radiation, two weeks after a devastating earthquake and tsunami disabled it.

"The situation today at the Fukushima Dai-ichi power plant is still very grave and serious. We must remain vigilant," Kan said. "We are not in a position where we can be optimistic. We must treat every development with the utmost care."

The uncertain situation halted work at the nuclear complex, where dozens had been trying feverishly to stop the overheated plant from leaking dangerous radiation. The plant has leaked some low levels of radiation, but a breach could mean a much larger release of contaminants.

The possible breach in Unit 3 might be a crack or a hole in the stainless steel chamber of the reactor core or in the spent fuel pool that's lined with several feet of reinforced concrete. The temperature and pressure inside the core, which holds the fuel rods, remained stable and was far lower than would further melt the core.

Suspicions of a possible breach were raised when two workers waded into water 10,000 times more radioactive than levels normally found in water in or around a reactor and suffered skin burns, the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said.

Kan apologized to farmers and business owners for the toll the radiation has had on their livelihoods: Several countries have halted some food imports from areas near the plant after milk and produce were found to contain elevated levels of radiation.

He also thanked utility workers, firefighters and military personnel for "risking their lives" to cool the overheated facility.

The alarm Friday comes two weeks to the day since the magnitude-9 quake triggered a tsunami that enveloped cities along the northeastern coast and knocked out the Fukushima reactor's cooling systems.

[Peter Lemkin]

The entire Nuclear Plant was evacuated [only us computers here!] as a puddle [sic] of water was found in Reactor #2 that was [are you ready for this!] 10 million times the danger level...now we are 'talking'...no messing around with a bit of radiation here and a bit there....now we are talking serious radiation..... Sarcophagus time! I really pity those workers fighting to keep the 'ship' from sinking there...as they will likely die early deaths and if they keep at it, could die in days. There are even times when the radiation can become so high that death in minutes is possible [it destroys the immune system and just normal bacteria in the air and body kill you!], as happened at Chernobyl. Ah, it looks worse and worse; but they keep downplaying it. Remember there are 23 of the exact same reactors in the USA....not that the others are much better. Stay tuned.....

They have somehow gotten fresh water in and working again and have slowly been switching from sea water [corrosive to the pipes and leaving salt residue in the cooling ponds that is dangerous] to fresh water, as all cooling equipment was designed for; but it is too late....more so that some of the cooling systems have leaks and the water puddles found now in Reactors 1, 2 and 3 are likely those leaks...but while the water in those cooling systems is usually somewhat radioactive, nothing like what has now been found...indicating to me that the reactor containment is open and the core materials [likely partly melted] is mixing with the cooling water...a dangerous scenario - and one that can NOT be repaired.

[Peter Lemkin]

Today, the Japenese Govt. is saying that the 10 million X safe radiation level is not 'correct'....but is not providing a substitute level. I think they are just reacting to the world shock at the levels...and now inventing a fiction for the facts.....few radiation meters are incorrect....and even IF a small area had that level, it doesn't change anything......Japan has learned how to spin a news story as well as anyone and are doing it here, methinks.....