JAPAN/FILE: Japan's nuclear watchdog raises alert on Fukushima radioactive groundwater

Record ID: 216051

  • Title: JAPAN/FILE: Japan's nuclear watchdog raises alert on Fukushima radioactive groundwater
  • Date: 5th August 2013
  • Summary: FUKUSHIMA DAIICHI NUCLEAR POWER PLANT, FUKUSHIMA PREFECTURE, JAPAN (FILE - JUNE, 2013) (REUTERS) CLEANUP WORKERS AT FUKUSHIMA DAIICHI POWER PLANT, SEEN FROM CAR VARIOUS OF WATER TANKS WORKERS WALKING CAR DRIVING PAST WATER TANKS VARIOUS OF NUCLEAR REACTOR BUILDING VARIOUS OF WRECKED BUILDING
  • Embargoed: 20th August 2013 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Japan
  • Country: Japan
  • Topics: Disasters,Environment,Energy
  • Reuters ID: LVA2R4E89134R4HWQK55A5ATRVOY
  • Story Text: Radioactive groundwater at Japan's crippled Fukushima nuclear plant has likely risen above an underground barrier meant to contain it, presenting an "emergency" that the plant's operator is not sufficiently addressing, a regulatory official said on Monday (August 5).
    This contaminated groundwater is likely seeping into the sea, exceeding legal limits of radioactive discharge, and countermeasures planned by Tokyo Electric Power Co will only forestall the growing problem temporarily, Shinji Kinjo, head of a Nuclear Regulatory Authority (NRA) task force, told Reuters.
    Rising groundwater is the latest problem for Tepco, which has been criticised for a slow improvised response and faulty disclosure ever since the giant March 2011 earthquake and tsunami wrecked the plant.
    This led to the meltdown of three reactor cores, hydrogen explosions and repeated releases of radiation into the ground, sea and air.
    Masashi Goto, a retired Toshiba Corp nuclear engineer who worked on several Tepco plants says that Tepco has taken a less than proactive approach to the crisis.
    "Tokyo Electric Power company only makes the decisions with the data they have on hand," he said.
    "For example, regarding the accusation that the contamination is spreading and leaking into the sea, they say that there is no such concrete evidence so we cannot say for certain and it might not be the case," Goto told Reuters Television.
    "This is how they look at things," he added, saying it was not the way these sorts of operations should be conducted.
    "It should be the other way round under these circumstances," he said.
    "They should be thinking that the contamination has spread to all sorts of places and that the contaminated water is flowing out and be taking multiple readings, gathering all the information they can and making decisions from there," Goto added.
    "This case just exposes the fact that they are absolutely not doing so," he told Reuters.
    Tepco pumps out some 400 tonnes a day of groundwater flowing from the hills above the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant into the basements of the destroyed buildings, which mixes with highly irradiated water that is used to cool the reactors in a stable state below 100 degrees Celsius.
    The utility is trying to prevent groundwater from reaching the plant by building a "bypass" but recent spikes of radioactive elements in sea water has prompted the utility to reverse months of denials and finally admit that tainted water is reaching the sea.
    Tepco general manager Masayuki Ono said at a news conference on Friday (August 2) the situation was bleak.
    "We understand that this discharge is beyond our control and we do not think the current situation is good," he said.
    In a bid to prevent more leaks, plant workers are injecting chemicals into the dirt along the shoreline of the No.1 reactor building to create an underground barrier that can block groundwater from reaching the ocean.
    But that barrier is only effective in solidifying the ground at least 1.8 meters below the surface and regulatory officials as well as experts warn it may not be enough to prevent tainted groundwater from flowing out to the sea.
    Goto said that Tepco is out of its depth.
    "The situation is already beyond what Tepco can handle. If it were possible to take proper measures, they would have done it already right?" he said.
    "It's not as if Tepco is refusing to do what they can. They are doing everything they can but there are no perfect solutions," he added.
    Contaminated water could rise to the ground's surface within three weeks, the Asahi Shimbun newspaper said on Saturday (August 3), while noting that Tepco's temporary plan to pump out a further 100 tonnes of groundwater a day would be stalled until later this month until when the equipment is ready.
    The regulatory task force overseeing accident measures of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station, which met Friday, "concluded that new measures are needed to stop the water from flowing into the sea that way," he said.
    Tepco told local media last week between 20 trillion to 40 trillion becquerels of radioactive tiritium had probably leaked into the sea in the two and a half years since the earthquake and tsunami which triggered the worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl.
    Such an admission, as well as renewed criticism from the regulator, show the precarious state of the $11 billion cleanup and Tepco's challenge to fix a fundamental problem: how to prevent water, tainted with radioactive elements like cesium, from flowing into the ocean.
    It was not immediately clear how much of a threat the possible increase in contaminated groundwater could cause.
    In the weeks following the 2011 disaster that destroyed the plant, the Japanese government allowed Tepco to dump tens of thousands of tonnes of contaminated water into the nearby Pacific Ocean in an emergency move.
    The toxic water release was heavily criticised by neighbouring countries as well as local fishermen and the utility has since promised it would not dump irradiated water without the consent of local townships.
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