nuclear waste

Greenpeace Warns ‘Potential Damage to Human DNA’ at Risk With Japan’s Plan to Dump Fukushima Water Into Ocean

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Published onFriday, October 23, 2020by Common Dreams

Greenpeace Warns ‘Potential Damage to Human DNA’ at Risk With Japan’s Plan to Dump Fukushima Water Into Ocean

“The policy of the Japanese government to dump nuclear waste into the Pacific Ocean is not based on scientific or environmental protection principles and has no justification.”by Andrea Germanos, staff writer

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Storage tanks for radioactive water stand at Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s (TEPCO) Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant on Jan. 29, 2020 in Okuma, Fukushima Prefecture, Japan.

Storage tanks for radioactive water stand at Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s (TEPCO) Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant on Jan. 29, 2020 in Okuma, Fukushima Prefecture, Japan. (Photo: Tomohiro Ohsumi/Getty Images)

Greenpeace sounded alarm Friday over the Japanese government’s plan to release stored water from the ill-fated Fukushima nuclear plant into the Pacific Ocean, releasing a new report warning about the presence of carbon-14, which the group says “has the potential to damage human DNA.”

The warning laid out in a new report says the government and plant operator TEPCO’s controversial plan—which has been under consideration for some time—is founded on “a series of myths” and pursues the cheapest option to get rid of the water over what is best for human and ecological health.

The plan allows “the government [to] create the impression that substantial progress is being made in the early decommissioning of the Fukushima Daiichi reactors,” Greenpeace says. 

Entitled Stemming the tide 2020: The reality of the Fukushima radioactive water crisis, the publication argues that the planned release of the water “will have serious, long-term consequences for communities and the environment, locally and much further afield.”

“Nearly 10 years after the start of the disaster, TEPCO and the Japanese government are still covering up the scale of the crisis at Fukushima Daiichi,” said Shaun Burnie, author of the report and senior nuclear specialist with Greenpeace Germany. He further accused the entities of having “deliberately held back for years detailed information on the radioactive material in the contaminated water.”

Beyond the remaining radioactive material tritium in the water, an additional problem is the presence of high levels of carbon-14, which belies the government’s assertion that the water is not “contaminated,” said Greenpeace.

According to the report,

If the contaminated water is discharged to the Pacific Ocean, all of the carbon-14 will be released to the environment. With a half-life of 5,730 years, carbon-14 is a major contributor to global human collective dose; once introduced into the environment carbon-14 will be delivered to local, regional, and global populations for many generations. […]

Contrary to the understanding of the Japanese government, water that contains large quantities of radioactive carbon-14 (as well as the other radioactive isotopes including strontium-90 and tritium) can only be described as contaminated.

Burnie said that TEPCO and the Japanese government “have failed to explain to the citizens of Fukushima, wider Japan, and to neighboring countries such as South Korea and China that the contaminated water to be dumped into the Pacific Ocean contains dangerous levels of carbon-14. These, together with other radionuclides in the water will remain hazardous for thousands of years with the potential to cause genetic damage.”

“It’s one more reason why these plans have to be abandoned,” said Burnie.

The report puts some of the blame on TEPCO’s decision to rely on technology known as ALPS that the operator should have known was incapable of bringing concentrations of radionuclides down to acceptable levels.

Rather than quickly moving to dump the water into the ocean, the Greenpeace report says the government should pursue “continued long-term storage and processing of the contaminated water.”

“There is no technical, engineering, or legal barrier to securing additional storage space for ALPS-treated contaminated water. It is a matter of political will,” said Burnie.

“The policy of the Japanese government to dump nuclear waste into the Pacific Ocean is not based on scientific or environmental n principles,” he said, “and has no justification.”

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Poor little snowflake Donny’s been super busy throwing tantrums after one of those mean girl reporters hurt his feelings again. When 60 Minutes’ Leslie Stahl started her interview with, “Are you ready for tough questions?” – and then asked some – he was so mad he left in a huff and posted it all to expose her “bias, hatred and rudeness,” aka her competence as he lied, dodged, stumbled. And earlier he even gave her a big book of all the health care things he’s done! It was blank, but still. Read More… More Further

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Continue ReadingGreenpeace Warns ‘Potential Damage to Human DNA’ at Risk With Japan’s Plan to Dump Fukushima Water Into Ocean

The Nonsense of Nuclear Fuel Reprocessing

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Dr. Ian Fairlie

The Nonsense of Nuclear Fuel Reprocessing

Many readers will have seen the interesting Panorama programme on the poor safety
record at Sellafield broadcast on BBC 1 on September 5
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b07v80s4/panorama-sellafields-nuclear-safety-
The BBC press release stated this was a “special investigation into the shocking state of
Britain’s most hazardous nuclear plant…” and it certainly was. Perhaps the most important
of several whistleblower revelations was that the previous US managers had been shocked
at the state of the plant when they took over its running in 2008.
Although the programme producers are to be congratulated for tackling the subject, it was
only 30 minutes long and tells only a small part of the whole sorry story.
This article tries to give more background information, and importantly, more analysis and
explanation. The full story would require several books and would be painful reading.

What is reprocessing?

Reprocessing is the name given to the physico-chemical treatment of spent nuclear fuel
carried on at Sellafield in Cumbria since the 1950s. This involves the stripping of metal
cladding from spent nuclear fuel assemblies, dissolving the inner uranium fuel in boiling
concentrated nitric acid, chemically separating out the uranium and plutonium isotopes and
storing the remaining dissolved fission products in large storage tanks.
It is a dirty, dangerous, unhealthy, polluting, expensive process which results high radiation
doses to the ~9,000 workers employed at Sellafield.

Environmental consequences

The Sellafield plant is host to several hundred radioactive waste streams and processes
which result in large discharges of radioactive liquids to sea and emissions of radioactive
gases and aerosols to the atmosphere. Raised levels of childhood leukemias in some villages
nearby are considered to be linked to the inhalation and ingestion of these radionuclides.
Sellafield, and a similar plant in La Hague France, continue to be, by some margin, the
largest sources of radioactive pollution in the world. For example, the Irish Sea is the most
radioactively polluted sea in the world with about half a tonne of plutonium sitting on its
seabed from reprocessing.
The collective doses to the world’s population from the long-lived gaseous nuclides C-14,
and I-129, and from medium-lived Kr-85 and H-3 (tritium) emitted at Sellafield are huge and
are estimated by radiation biologists to cause tens of thousands of early deaths throughout
the world.
Another result is the 140 tonnes of unneeded, highly radiotoxic, plutonium (Pu) stored on
site at a cost of £50 million a year. Pu is fissile and, in the wrong hands, this amount could
be made into ~20,000 warheads, ie it is a serious nuclear proliferation danger.

The Liquid Waste Tanks

Shitty open-air pond at Sellafield nuclear waste dump containing spent nuclear fuel rods.
Shitty open-air pond at Sellafield nuclear waste dump containing spent nuclear fuel rods.

Not discussed in the BBC programme, but perhaps most serious of all, are the ~20 large
holding tanks at Sellafield containing thousands of litres of extremely radiotoxic fission
products, including long-lived Cs-137and Sr-90. Discussing these tanks, the previous
management consortium Nuclear Management Partners stated in 2012 “there is a mass of
very hazardous (nuclear) waste onsite in storage conditions that are extraordinarily
vulnerable, and in facilities that are well past their designated life”.
The National Audit Office (NAO) stated these tanks pose “significant risks to people and the
environment”. One official review concluded that, at worst, an explosive release from the
tanks could kill two million Britons and require the evacuation of an area reaching from
Glasgow to Liverpool. These dangerous tanks have also been the subject of complaints from
Ireland and Norway who fear their countries could be contaminated if explosions or fires
were to occur.

…

 

Let’s not mince words, the practice of reprocessing at Sellafield has been and remains a
monumental national disgrace.
…

Another seabird in one of Sellafield nuclear dump's open-air ponds.
Another seabird in one of Sellafield nuclear dump’s open-air ponds.

The shocking state of the Sellafield nuclear shitehole

Continue ReadingThe Nonsense of Nuclear Fuel Reprocessing

Wales can object to Hinkley Point C because they were not adequately consulted. All and everyone who can should object to HP3.

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I encourage any and everyone and anyone with a legitimate objection to Hinley Point C to pursue that objection.

Continue ReadingWales can object to Hinkley Point C because they were not adequately consulted. All and everyone who can should object to HP3.

I watched that Panorama program about Sellafield last night :: This is draft

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I got the impression that the people supposedly in charge were far too relaxed and too fast to excuse anything and everything, that the people in charge of Sellafield were not taking it all seriously.

Isn’t that the impression you got? Oh radioactive half life of Plutonium Pu-239 of 24,100 years. We’ll just put it in this pond here, forget and ignore it and let seagulls

I got the impression that they had no idea about anything – that they were totally inept. they were treating it like it was nothing. Oh yes, no need to worry that we have got this serious radioactive waste which we have ignored for the past 60 years. There’s no need to worry about that we put it in water in these concrete ponds that are falling to bits.

ed: Sellafield is a nuclear waste shithole

ed:

Sellafield needs urgent inspections. Please get in there urgently. International, EU inspectors?

ed: I intend to do an article on the Radioactive Pollution of Irish Sea which is largely due to Sellafield.

16/9/16: it has been announced that Theresa May’s Conservative government are going for Sellafield C in partnership with EDF and China.

I intend to further investigate and publish on Sellafield’s irrsponsible and fantastically negligent actions of pollution of the Irish Sea and their ridiculous shite pools.

Continue ReadingI watched that Panorama program about Sellafield last night :: This is draft

The shocking state of the Sellafield nuclear shitehole

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Sellafield – originally called Windscale but the name was changed as a PR stunt after the 1957 Windscale fire – was built initially as a plant producing plutonium to build the UK’s first nuclear bombs. Political pressures dictated that the plutonium was produced quickly … so that the UK would have nuclear bombs sooner. Everything was secondary to producing the plutonium quickly. There’s also the issue that there was very little experience or expertise in running nuclear reactors – it had only been done in the States at that time. UK and USSR were desperate to catch up.

The Sellafield site is a huge sprawling mess of past endeavours. It is now a nuclear shitehole having accumulated foreign as well as UK’s nuclear waste extremely poorly stored and mismanaged. Sellafield is a filthy nuclear waste site that dumps thousands of litres of radioactive waste into the Irish Sea daily.

Central to Sellafield’s crap storage of nuclear waste are vast open-air storage ponds 5 or 6 metres deep. There is nothing high-tech about these ponds – they are simply rotting concrete ponds dating from the 50s containing water and highly radioactive waste open to the elements. There are accounts of flocks of seagulls, sparrows and other birds spreading this radioactivity since there is no way of preventing them.

Since Sellafield’s workers sign the Official Secrets Act, we rely on whistle-blowers for inside information. A whistle-blower leaked photos of the shocking ponds to the Ecologist magazine in 2014. [These photos are actually taken from the Guardian].

Shitty open-air pond at Sellafield nuclear waste dump containing spent nuclear fuel rods. Notice the seabird on the surface getting a dose of radiation to spread far and wide.
Shitty open-air pond at Sellafield nuclear waste dump containing spent nuclear fuel rods. Notice the seabird on the surface getting a dose of radiation to spread far and wide.

Weeds growing around derelict machinery at Sellafield nuclear waste dump.
Weeds growing around derelict machinery at Sellafield nuclear waste dump.

Another seabird in one of Sellafield nuclear dump's open-air ponds.
Another seabird in one of Sellafield nuclear dump’s open-air ponds.

The Ecologist says

The images … from an anonymous source, show the state of spent nuclear fuel storage ponds that were commissioned in 1952, and used until the mid-1970’s as short term storage for spent fuel until it could be re-processed, producing plutonium for military use. However they were completely abandoned in the mid-1970s and have been left derelict for almost 40 years.

NOTE: The full set of original leaked photos is now placed in the public domain, available here.

The photographs show cracked concrete tanks holding water contaminated with high levels of radiation, seagulls bathing on the water, broken equipment, a dangerous mess of discarded items on elevated walkways, and weeds growing around the tanks.

The fuel storage ponds, the largest measuring 20m wide, 150m long and 6m deep, are now completely packed with spent fuel in disastrously poor condition.

If the ponds drain, the spent fuel may spontaneously ignite

The ponds are now undergoing decommissioning in order to restore them to safe condition. But the process is fraught with danger – and nuclear expert John Large warns that massive and uncontrolled radioactive releases to the environment could occur.

“This pond is build above ground”, he said. “It’s like an concrete dock full of water. But the concrete is in dreadful condition, degraded and fractured, and if the ponds drain, the Magnox fuel will ignite and that would lead to a massive release of radioactive material.

“Looking at the photos I am very disturbed at the degraded and run down condition of the structures and support services. In my opinion there is a significant risk that the system could fail.”

“If you got a breach of the wall by accident or by terrorist attack, the Magnox fuel would burn. I would say there’s many hundreds of tonnes in there. It could give rise to a very big radioactive release. It’s not for me to make comparisons with Chernobyl or Fukushima, but it could certainly cause serious contamination over a wide area and for a very long time.”

…

New Scientist: Shocking state of world’s riskiest nuclear waste site

URGENT clean-up of two of the world’s most dangerous radioactive waste stores will be delayed by at least five years, despite growing safety fears.

The waste is stored at the UK’s Sellafield nuclear reprocessing site, which holds radioactive waste dating back to the dawn of the nuclear age. An accident at the derelict site could release radioactive materials into the air over the UK and beyond.

Last week, the UK government sacked the private consortium running the £80-billion-programme to clean up Sellafield, and gave the job back to its own agency, the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA). The clean-up operation, scheduled to end by 2120, costs the government £1.9 billion a year.

The private consortium, Nuclear Management Partners, was meant to “bring in world-class expertise” and allow the government to “get to grips with the legacy after decades of inaction”, according to a 2008 statement by Mike O’Brien, energy minister at the time. But six years on, the privatisation experiment has been abandoned.

The surprise renationalisation comes after delays at two of the four waste stores prioritised for clean-up. The four ponds and silos contain hundreds of tonnes of highly radioactive material from more than 60 years of operations. The decaying structures are cracking, leaking waste into the soil, and are at risk of explosions from gases created by corrosion.

…

 

 

Continue ReadingThe shocking state of the Sellafield nuclear shitehole