Fukushima: It's much worse than you think
Leroy N. Soetoro
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"Fukushima is the biggest industrial catastrophe in the history of
mankind," Arnold Gundersen, a former nuclear industry senior vice
president, told Al Jazeera.
Japan's 9.0 earthquake on March 11 caused a massive tsunami that crippled
the cooling systems at the Tokyo Electric Power Company's (TEPCO) nuclear
plant in Fukushima, Japan. It also led to hydrogen explosions and reactor
meltdowns that forced evacuations of those living within a 20km radius of
the plant.
Gundersen, a licensed reactor operator with 39 years of nuclear power
engineering experience, managing and coordinating projects at 70 nuclear
power plants around the US, says the Fukushima nuclear plant likely has
more exposed reactor cores than commonly believed.
"Fukushima has three nuclear reactors exposed and four fuel cores
exposed," he said, "You probably have the equivalent of 20 nuclear reactor
cores because of the fuel cores, and they are all in desperate need of
being cooled, and there is no means to cool them effectively."
TEPCO has been spraying water on several of the reactors and fuel cores,
but this has led to even greater problems, such as radiation being emitted
into the air in steam and evaporated sea water - as well as generating
hundreds of thousands of tons of highly radioactive sea water that has to
be disposed of.
"The problem is how to keep it cool," says Gundersen. "They are pouring in
water and the question is what are they going to do with the waste that
comes out of that system, because it is going to contain plutonium and
uranium. Where do you put the water?"
Even though the plant is now shut down, fission products such as uranium
continue to generate heat, and therefore require cooling.
"The fuels are now a molten blob at the bottom of the reactor," Gundersen
added. "TEPCO announced they had a melt through. A melt down is when the
fuel collapses to the bottom of the reactor, and a melt through means it
has melted through some layers. That blob is incredibly radioactive, and
now you have water on top of it. The water picks up enormous amounts of
radiation, so you add more water and you are generating hundreds of
thousands of tons of highly radioactive water."
Independent scientists have been monitoring the locations of radioactive
"hot spots" around Japan, and their findings are disconcerting.
"We have 20 nuclear cores exposed, the fuel pools have several cores each,
that is 20 times the potential to be released than Chernobyl," said
Gundersen. "The data I'm seeing shows that we are finding hot spots
further away than we had from Chernobyl, and the amount of radiation in
many of them was the amount that caused areas to be declared no-man's-land
for Chernobyl. We are seeing square kilometres being found 60 to 70
kilometres away from the reactor. You can't clean all this up. We still
have radioactive wild boar in Germany, 30 years after Chernobyl."
Radiation monitors for children
Japan's Nuclear Emergency Response Headquarters finally admitted earlier
this month that reactors 1, 2, and 3 at the Fukushima plant experienced
full meltdowns.
TEPCO announced that the accident probably released more radioactive
material into the environment than Chernobyl, making it the worst nuclear
accident on record.
Meanwhile, a nuclear waste advisor to the Japanese government reported
that about 966 square kilometres near the power station - an area roughly
17 times the size of Manhattan - is now likely uninhabitable.
In the US, physician Janette Sherman MD and epidemiologist Joseph Mangano
published an essay shedding light on a 35 per cent spike in infant
mortality in northwest cities that occurred after the Fukushima meltdown,
and may well be the result of fallout from the stricken nuclear plant.
The eight cities included in the report are San Jose, Berkeley, San
Francisco, Sacramento, Santa Cruz, Portland, Seattle, and Boise, and the
time frame of the report included the ten weeks immediately following the
disaster.
"There is and should be concern about younger people being exposed, and
the Japanese government will be giving out radiation monitors to
children," Dr MV Ramana, a physicist with the Programme on Science and
Global Security at Princeton University who specialises in issues of
nuclear safety, told Al Jazeera.
Dr Ramana explained that he believes the primary radiation threat
continues to be mostly for residents living within 50km of the plant, but
added: "There are going to be areas outside of the Japanese government's
20km mandatory evacuation zone where radiation is higher. So that could
mean evacuation zones in those areas as well."
Gundersen points out that far more radiation has been released than has
been reported.
"They recalculated the amount of radiation released, but the news is
really not talking about this," he said. "The new calculations show that
within the first week of the accident, they released 2.3 times as much
radiation as they thought they released in the first 80 days."
According to Gundersen, the exposed reactors and fuel cores are continuing
to release microns of caesium, strontium, and plutonium isotopes. These
are referred to as "hot particles".
"We are discovering hot particles everywhere in Japan, even in Tokyo," he
said. "Scientists are finding these everywhere. Over the last 90 days
these hot particles have continued to fall and are being deposited in high
concentrations. A lot of people are picking these up in car engine air
filters."
Radioactive air filters from cars in Fukushima prefecture and Tokyo are
now common, and Gundersen says his sources are finding radioactive air
filters in the greater Seattle area of the US as well.
The hot particles on them can eventually lead to cancer.
"These get stuck in your lungs or GI tract, and they are a constant
irritant," he explained, "One cigarette doesn't get you, but over time
they do. These [hot particles] can cause cancer, but you can't measure
them with a Geiger counter. Clearly people in Fukushima prefecture have
breathed in a large amount of these particles. Clearly the upper West
Coast of the US has people being affected. That area got hit pretty heavy
in April."
Blame the US?
In reaction to the Fukushima catastrophe, Germany is phasing out all of
its nuclear reactors over the next decade. In a referendum vote this
Monday, 95 per cent of Italians voted in favour of blocking a nuclear
power revival in their country. A recent newspaper poll in Japan shows
nearly three-quarters of respondents favour a phase-out of nuclear power
in Japan.
Why have alarms not been sounded about radiation exposure in the US?
Nuclear operator Exelon Corporation has been among Barack Obama's biggest
campaign donors, and is one of the largest employers in Illinois where
Obama was senator. Exelon has donated more than $269,000 to his political
campaigns, thus far. Obama also appointed Exelon CEO John Rowe to his Blue
Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future.
Dr Shoji Sawada is a theoretical particle physicist and Professor Emeritus
at Nagoya University in Japan.
He is concerned about the types of nuclear plants in his country, and the
fact that most of them are of US design.
"Most of the reactors in Japan were designed by US companies who did not
care for the effects of earthquakes," Dr Sawada told Al Jazeera. "I think
this problem applies to all nuclear power stations across Japan."
Using nuclear power to produce electricity in Japan is a product of the
nuclear policy of the US, something Dr Sawada feels is also a large
component of the problem.
"Most of the Japanese scientists at that time, the mid-1950s, considered
that the technology of nuclear energy was under development or not
established enough, and that it was too early to be put to practical use,"
he explained. "The Japan Scientists Council recommended the Japanese
government not use this technology yet, but the government accepted to use
enriched uranium to fuel nuclear power stations, and was thus subjected to
US government policy."
As a 13-year-old, Dr Sawada experienced the US nuclear attack against
Japan from his home, situated just 1400 metres from the hypocentre of the
Hiroshima bomb.
"I think the Fukushima accident has caused the Japanese people to abandon
the myth that nuclear power stations are safe," he said. "Now the opinions
of the Japanese people have rapidly changed. Well beyond half the
population believes Japan should move towards natural electricity."
A problem of infinite proportions
Dr Ramana expects the plant reactors and fuel cores to be cooled enough
for a shutdown within two years.
"But it is going to take a very long time before the fuel can be removed
from the reactor," he added. "Dealing with the cracking and compromised
structure and dealing with radiation in the area will take several years,
there's no question about that."
Dr Sawada is not as clear about how long a cold shutdown could take, and
said the problem will be "the effects from caesium-137 that remains in the
soil and the polluted water around the power station and underground. It
will take a year, or more time, to deal with this".
Gundersen pointed out that the units are still leaking radiation.
"They are still emitting radioactive gases and an enormous amount of
radioactive liquid," he said. "It will be at least a year before it stops
boiling, and until it stops boiling, it's going to be cranking out
radioactive steam and liquids."
Gundersen worries about more earthquake aftershocks, as well as how to
cool two of the units.
"Unit four is the most dangerous, it could topple," he said. "After the
earthquake in Sumatra there was an 8.6 [aftershock] about 90 days later,
so we are not out of the woods yet. And you're at a point where, if that
happens, there is no science for this, no one has ever imagined having hot
nuclear fuel lying outside the fuel pool. They've not figured out how to
cool units three and four."
Gundersen's assessment of solving this crisis is grim.
"Units one through three have nuclear waste on the floor, the melted core,
that has plutonium in it, and that has to be removed from the environment
for hundreds of thousands of years," he said. "Somehow, robotically, they
will have to go in there and manage to put it in a container and store it
for infinity, and that technology doesn't exist. Nobody knows how to pick
up the molten core from the floor, there is no solution available now for
picking that up from the floor."
Dr Sawada says that the creation of nuclear fission generates radioactive
materials for which there is simply no knowledge informing us how to
dispose of the radioactive waste safely.
"Until we know how to safely dispose of the radioactive materials
generated by nuclear plants, we should postpone these activities so as not
to cause further harm to future generations," he explained. "To do
otherwise is simply an immoral act, and that is my belief, both as a
scientist and as a survivor of the Hiroshima atomic bombing."
Gundersen believes it will take experts at least ten years to design and
implement the plan.
"So ten to 15 years from now maybe we can say the reactors have been
dismantled, and in the meantime you wind up contaminating the water,"
Gundersen said. "We are already seeing Strontium [at] 250 times the
allowable limits in the water table at Fukushima. Contaminated water
tables are incredibly difficult to clean. So I think we will have a
contaminated aquifer in the area of the Fukushima site for a long, long
time to come."
Unfortunately, the history of nuclear disasters appears to back
Gundersen's assessment.
"With Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, and now with Fukushima, you can
pinpoint the exact day and time they started," he said, "But they never
end."
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