Fukushima Worse than Ever
An article in the International Business Times dated 11 February 2017 stated that radiation inside Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plant has reached such astronomical levels that not even a robot can survive inside. As soon as the robots got close to the reactors, the radiation destroyed their wiring and rendered them useless, causing long delays, Naohiro Masuda, TEPCO's head of decommissioning told Reuters, adding that because each robot has to be custom-built for each building, it takes two years to develop every single one.
Radiation reached “unimaginable” levels recently, experts told The Japan Times. The previous high was measured at 73 sieverts per hour, one year after the disaster. In contrast (6 years later), new measurements showed radiation levels of 650 sieverts per hour. A single sievert would cause radiation sickness in a human, while a dose of 10 sieverts would cause death within weeks.
The reactor complex was built adjacent to a mountain range and millions of gallons of water emanate from the mountains daily beneath the reactor complex, causing some of the earth below the reactor buildings to partially liquefy. As the water flows beneath the damaged reactors, it immerses the three molten cores and becomes extremely radioactive as it continues its journey into the adjacent Pacific Ocean.
Every day since the accident began, these 300 to 400 tons of water has poured into the Pacific where numerous isotopes – including cesium 137, 134, strontium 90, tritium, plutonium, americium and up to 100 more – enter the ocean and bio-concentrate by orders of magnitude at each step of the food chain — algae, crustaceans, little fish, big fish then humans. Fish swim thousands of miles; and tuna, salmon and other species found on the American west coast now contain some of these radioactive elements, which are tasteless, odorless and invisible. Entering the human body by ingestion these radioactive elements concentrate in various organs, irradiating adjacent cells for many years.
The cancer cycle is initiated by a single mutation in a single regulatory gene in a single cell and the incubation time for cancer is any time from 2 to 90 years. And, no cancer defines its origin. We could be catching radioactive fish in Australia or the fish that are imported could contain radioactive isotopes, but unless they are consistently tested we will never know.
In addition to the mountain water becoming highly radioactive (300 to 400 tons of water per day passing under the reactor complex, and reaching the Pacific Ocean); since the accident, TEPCO has daily pumped over 300 tons of sea water into the damaged reactors to keep them cool. That sea water becomes intensely radioactive and is pumped out again and stored in over 1,200 huge storage tanks scattered over the Daichi site. These tanks may not withstand a large earthquake and can rupture releasing their contents into the ocean.
Moreover, TEPCO is rapidly running out of storage space and is trying to convince the local fishermen that it would be okay to empty the tanks into the sea. It is highly probable that these reactors will never be cleaned up nor decommissioned, because such a task is not humanly possible, and the technology to do so does not exist at this time. It is likely that they will continue to pour water into the Pacific for the rest of time.
"It is extremely difficult to access the inside of the nuclear plant," Naohiro Masuda, TEPCO's head of decommissioning, told Reuters. "The biggest obstacle is the radiation." "The reactors continue to bleed radiation into the ground water and thence into the Pacific Ocean," added Artie Gunderson, a former nuclear engineer who is not involved in the project.”
TEPCO successfully removed 1,535 spent fuel-rod assemblies from the cooling pool in the reactor-4 building, which was a relatively easy job because that reactor had lower radiation levels, so human workers could oversee the retrieval process more closely. However, reactor 3, which is where the recently deceased robots had been sent, contains far higher levels of radiation, and humans can’t get near it. It’s estimated that there are 566 fuel-rod assemblies that need to be removed from just this one reactor. But, “the fuel rods melted through their containment vessels in the reactors, and no one knows exactly where they are now," Reuters reports.
An article in the International Business Times dated 11 February 2017 stated that radiation inside Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plant has reached such astronomical levels that not even a robot can survive inside. As soon as the robots got close to the reactors, the radiation destroyed their wiring and rendered them useless, causing long delays, Naohiro Masuda, TEPCO's head of decommissioning told Reuters, adding that because each robot has to be custom-built for each building, it takes two years to develop every single one.
Radiation reached “unimaginable” levels recently, experts told The Japan Times. The previous high was measured at 73 sieverts per hour, one year after the disaster. In contrast (6 years later), new measurements showed radiation levels of 650 sieverts per hour. A single sievert would cause radiation sickness in a human, while a dose of 10 sieverts would cause death within weeks.
The reactor complex was built adjacent to a mountain range and millions of gallons of water emanate from the mountains daily beneath the reactor complex, causing some of the earth below the reactor buildings to partially liquefy. As the water flows beneath the damaged reactors, it immerses the three molten cores and becomes extremely radioactive as it continues its journey into the adjacent Pacific Ocean.
Every day since the accident began, these 300 to 400 tons of water has poured into the Pacific where numerous isotopes – including cesium 137, 134, strontium 90, tritium, plutonium, americium and up to 100 more – enter the ocean and bio-concentrate by orders of magnitude at each step of the food chain — algae, crustaceans, little fish, big fish then humans. Fish swim thousands of miles; and tuna, salmon and other species found on the American west coast now contain some of these radioactive elements, which are tasteless, odorless and invisible. Entering the human body by ingestion these radioactive elements concentrate in various organs, irradiating adjacent cells for many years.
The cancer cycle is initiated by a single mutation in a single regulatory gene in a single cell and the incubation time for cancer is any time from 2 to 90 years. And, no cancer defines its origin. We could be catching radioactive fish in Australia or the fish that are imported could contain radioactive isotopes, but unless they are consistently tested we will never know.
In addition to the mountain water becoming highly radioactive (300 to 400 tons of water per day passing under the reactor complex, and reaching the Pacific Ocean); since the accident, TEPCO has daily pumped over 300 tons of sea water into the damaged reactors to keep them cool. That sea water becomes intensely radioactive and is pumped out again and stored in over 1,200 huge storage tanks scattered over the Daichi site. These tanks may not withstand a large earthquake and can rupture releasing their contents into the ocean.
Moreover, TEPCO is rapidly running out of storage space and is trying to convince the local fishermen that it would be okay to empty the tanks into the sea. It is highly probable that these reactors will never be cleaned up nor decommissioned, because such a task is not humanly possible, and the technology to do so does not exist at this time. It is likely that they will continue to pour water into the Pacific for the rest of time.
"It is extremely difficult to access the inside of the nuclear plant," Naohiro Masuda, TEPCO's head of decommissioning, told Reuters. "The biggest obstacle is the radiation." "The reactors continue to bleed radiation into the ground water and thence into the Pacific Ocean," added Artie Gunderson, a former nuclear engineer who is not involved in the project.”
TEPCO successfully removed 1,535 spent fuel-rod assemblies from the cooling pool in the reactor-4 building, which was a relatively easy job because that reactor had lower radiation levels, so human workers could oversee the retrieval process more closely. However, reactor 3, which is where the recently deceased robots had been sent, contains far higher levels of radiation, and humans can’t get near it. It’s estimated that there are 566 fuel-rod assemblies that need to be removed from just this one reactor. But, “the fuel rods melted through their containment vessels in the reactors, and no one knows exactly where they are now," Reuters reports.