Call to action to UN Secretary General to prevent catastrophic high-level radioactive waste fire at Fukushima Daiichi Unit 4

In an open letter to the United Nations Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon, Japanese diplomat Akio Matsumura has renewed his warnings about the risk of a catastrophic fire in the high-level radioactive waste storage pool at Japan's ravaged Fukushima Daiichi Unit 4 atomic reactor (see photo, left).

What can you do?

Please take one or more of the following actions:

Contact Chairman Wyden's ENR Committee. Thank him for his courageous leadership on this issue, and urge him to renew his efforts to persuade the Obama administration to deploy the full resources of the U.S. government to prevent a catastrophe at Fukushima Daiichi Unit 4's high-level radioactive waste storage pool.

Contact the White House, Chairwoman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission Allison Macfarlane, Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz, Secretary of State John Kerry, and/or Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, urging them to support Chairman Wyden's call to action.

You can also contact your own U.S. Senators and U.S. Represenative, and urge them to support Chairman Wyden's efforts. To phone your Members of Congress, you can get patched through via the Capitol Switchboard: (202) 224-3121.

Background: Last year, Matsumura, working with the likes of former Japanese Ambassador to Switzerland, Murata, brought this grave risk to the attention of not only the Japanese people, but the world. Matsumura also called upon the U.S. government to take meaningful action, as the Japanese government obviously will not.

It now appears very unlikely that Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) will meet its own previous deadline of late 2013 for restoring sufficient infrastructure at Unit 4 to support the weight of a crane needed to lift 100-ton irradiated nuclear fuel waste transfer casks from the pool, several stories up in the air, to the ground. As mentioned in Matsumura's letter to Ban Ki-moon, an ongoing crisis of radioactively contaminated groundwater is distracting TEPCO's attention from such other priorities at the devastated site.

Predictions are that a magnitude 7.0 earthquake is likely to strike in northeast Japan in the next few years. It is doubtful that the Unit 4 reactor building, so badly damaged by the explosion which hit it after the earthquake and tsunami in March 2011, could withstand such a large jolt. Its high-level radioactive waste storage pool still contains some 100-200 metric tons of irradiated nuclear fuel, which could catch fire if its cooling water supply is suddenly drained away (or more slowly boils away, as due to a long-term disruption to the electricity supply needed to power circulation pumps; shorter duration disruptions have been a recurring problem at the site). 

Robert Alvarez of Institute for Policy Studies has calculated that the Unit 4 pool contains more than 10 times the hazardous radioactive Cesium-137 than was released during the Chernobyl nuclear catastrophe. The Unit 4 pool has no radiological containment structure around it. In fact, it is open-air. Thus, any radiological releases would be directly into the environment, and would quickly dwarf what has already been released during the past two years of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear catastrophe.

The pool needs to be emptied of its irradiated nuclear fuel before such an unthinkable catastrophe unfolds. But how?

U.S. Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR), now Chairman of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, donned a radiation protection suit and visited Fukushima Daiichi in April 2012. Upon his return, he urgently called upon the U.S. government to offer to the Japanese government the full resources at its disposal, to aid in the emptying of the Unit 4 high-level radioactive waste storage pool. But there was no response from the Obama administration.

Now that President Obama has won a second term, and has new leadership at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Department of Energy, State Department, and Department of Defense, it is a good time to renew Sen. Wyden's April 2012 call.

Lastly, please consider making a tax deductible donation to support the vital work of Akio Matsumura.

Update on May 30, 2013 by admin

This week, Enformable Nuclear News posted a photo obtained from TEPCO, "taken inside of the crippled Unit 4 reactor building, showing a orange safety cone which has been flipped upside down to direct leaking materials into a hose which has been attached with duct tape." (photo left)

Japan should pull the plug on reprocessing: editorial

Now that the Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) - Japan's equivalent to the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission - has put a hold on starting up the Rokkasho reprocessing plant (pictured), the Asahi Shimbun, a leading Japan daily newspaper, has called in an editorial for a cancellation of the project. The NRA will not allow pre-operational tests at the plant until new safety standards are in place. The Asahi Shimbun wisely opines: "We need to face the fact that the government’s program to establish a nuclear fuel recycling system is as good as dead. If the plant starts operating, the plutonium it churns out will pile up with no definite plan to use it. The situation could spark concerns within the international community that Japan’s nuclear power generation might contribute to nuclear proliferation."

An additional reason to abandon the reprocessing plan is that "the project to develop fast breeder reactors, which are supposed to play a central role in the recycling system, has been stalled for years due to a series of problems at the Monju fast breeder prototype reactor in Tsuruga, Fukui Prefecture. There is little prospect for commercialization of the technology."

Groups like Green Action have been fighting for years to prevent the start-up of Rokkasho. Victory now looks a step closer.

Tritium contamination of growing stockpile of radioactive water leads to outcry against release to Pacific at Fukushima Daiichi

In an article entitled "Flow of Tainted Water Is Latest Crisis at Japan Nuclear Plant," the New York Times has reported that continuing leaks of groundwater into the rubblized Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant is causing a flood of radioactively contaminated water requiring a sprawling -- and ever growing -- complex of water storage tanks.

As the New York Times reports:

'...But the biggest problem, critics say, was that Tepco and other members of the oversight committee appeared to assume all along that they would eventually be able to dump the contaminated water into the ocean once a powerful new filtering system was put in place that could remove 62 types of radioactive particles, including strontium.

The dumping plans have now been thwarted by what some experts say was a predictable problem: a public outcry over tritium, a relatively weak radioactive isotope that cannot be removed from the water.

Tritium, which can be harmful only if ingested, is regularly released into the environment by normally functioning nuclear plants, but even Tepco acknowledges that the water at Fukushima contains about 100 times the amount of tritium released in an average year by a healthy plant...

...The public outcry over the plans to dump tritium-tainted water into the sea — driven in part by the company’s failure to inform the public in 2011 when it dumped radioactive water into the Pacific — was so loud that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe personally intervened last month to say that there would be “no unsafe release.”

Meanwhile, the amount of water stored at the plant just keeps growing.

“How could Tepco not realize that it had to get public approval before dumping this into the sea?” said Muneo Morokuzu, an expert on public policy at the University of Tokyo who has called for creating a specialized new company just to run the cleanup. “This all just goes to show that Tepco is in way over its head.”...'

It should be pointed out that tritium is not a "relatively weak radioactive isotope," but rather a relatively powerful one, once incorporated into the human body. Tritium is a clinically proven cause of cancer, birth defects, and genetic damage.

It must also be corrected that ingestion is not the only pathway for tritium incorporation -- inhalation, and even absorption through the skin, are hazardous exposure pathways.

Japanese court rejects case demanding evacuation of children

A court in Sendai, Japan, has ruled that the city of Koriyama has no legal obligation to evacuate its children even though it acknowledged that radiation levels in the Fukushima prefecture city exceed levels deemed safe prior to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactor meltdowns. The decision leaves families burdened with the expense of self-evacuating. A lawyer for the Koriyma parents and activists who brought the suit declared the decision unfairly victimizes children who had "absolutely no responsibility" for the nuclear disaster. Children who should be enjoying carefree childhoods are now instead subjected to the fears and realities of radiation exposure and the possibility of cancer manifesting later in life (see picture). The ruling can be appealed. Koriyama is located about 40 miles from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power reactors. Read more.

A plea for the evacuation of Fukushima's children

Update on April 19, 2013 by admin

And please sign the petition. The Sendai High Court is expected  to make its judgment on the appeal for the collective evacuation trial, very soon.nThe judgment on the evacuation trial for saving children from dangerous exposure will affect not only the lives of the children, who are plaintiffs, but also those of Japanese children as a whole. And it will decide the shape of future Japan.