AI
Tuesday, April 05, 2011 3:45:51 AM
Fukushima update: TEPCO forced to deliberately pollute ocean with radioisotopes - April 04, 2011
http://blogs.nature.com/news/thegreatbeyond/2011/04/fukushima_update_tepco_forced.html [no comments yet]
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Tepco Dumps Radioactive Water Into Sea on Safety Concerns
Apr 4, 2011 1:20 PM CT
Tokyo Electric Power Co. began dumping radioactive water from its crippled Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear station into the sea so that it would have a place to store more highly contaminated water.
The government approved the discharge so that Tepco, as the utility is known, can drain turbine buildings for the Nos. 2 and 3 reactors of water so radioactive it burned workers, the chief cabinet secretary said.
“We didn’t have any other alternatives,” Yukio Edano told reporters in Tokyo. “This is a measure we had to take to secure safety.”
Tepco has been battling to restart cooling pumps that were knocked out by a March 11 quake and tsunami, resulting in a partial meltdown of some of the plant’s six reactors. Tokyo Electric plans to release 11,500 tons of water containing radioactive iodine levels about 100 times the regulatory limit.
“Until they get rid of that water they can’t get in there to sort out the pumps,” Robin Grimes, a professor of materials physics at Imperial College in London, said by telephone. “If they’re going against regulatory guidelines, that’s definitely not something you’d want to do unless you had very little choice. It’s the least worst option.”
[...]
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-03/tokyo-electric-s-plan-to-plug-leaking-radioactive-water-with-sawdust-fails.html
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Japan nuke plant dumps radioactive water into sea
In this Saturday, April 2, 2011 photo released by Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) via Kyodo News, leaking radioactive contaminated water drain through crack of a maintenance pit, right, into the sea, near the Unit 2 reactor of Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear nuclear power plant in Okumamachi, Fukushima Prefecture, northeastern Japan. Highly radioactive water was leaking into the sea Saturday from a crack discovered at the nuclear power plant destabilized by last month's earthquake and tsunami, a new setback as frustrated survivors of the disasters complained that Japan's government was paying too much attention to the nuclear crisis. (AP Photo/Tokyo Electric Power Co. via Kyodo News)
April 4, 2011
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2011/04/03/international/i033301D73.DTL [with comments]
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Tepco Dumping Toxic Water Angers Fishermen; Stock Plunges
By Tsuyoshi Inajima - Apr 4, 2011 9:08 PM CT
Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s decision to dump radioactive water from its crippled Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear station into the sea angered fishermen and pushed the Japanese utility’s shares to a record low.
The company known as Tepco plunged as much as 15 percent to the lowest since its listing in August 1951. A fishing industry group in Fukushima prefecture asked the utility to stop releasing contaminated water, and radioactive iodine and cesium were found in fish caught in [waters] north of the Japanese capital.
Tepco began discharging 11,500 tons of water yesterday, enough to fill 4 1/2 Olympic-sized swimming pools, to make room to store more highly contaminated fluids. The United Nations nuclear watchdog said the partial meltdown at the station was a result of “errors” from the time a March 11 quake and tsunami knocked out pumps used to cool reactors and spent fuel.
“Such an accident should not have happened,” Denis Flory, deputy director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said at a press briefing in Vienna yesterday. “Something was not done from the very beginning.”
The stock plunged 10 percent to 398 yen, as of 10:20 a.m. on the Tokyo Stock Exchange. The shares fell to 376 yen earlier. Tepco has lost 81 percent of its value since March 10, the day before the magnitude-9 earthquake and tsunami struck northeast Japan, compared with a 8.5 percent drop in the Topix index.
“The news of the discharge of contaminated water was negatively received while there is no sign for the situation to settle down,” said Satoshi Yuzaki, Tokyo-based head of the market information department at Takagi Securities Co.
Earnings Delayed
Tepco has delayed its full-year earnings report as it assesses the financial impact of the earthquake, the company said in a faxed statement today, without setting a date.
A fishing industry group in Fukushima prefecture has asked Tepco to stop releasing radioactive water into the sea near the Dai-Ichi power plant, NHK reported on its website. Radioactive iodine and cesium were found in fish caught off the coast of Ibaraki, north of Tokyo, the Yomiuri newspaper reported, citing a local fishery cooperative.
The fish aren’t on the market because sand-eel fishing was discontinued after the March 11 earthquake, the report said.
The Japanese government approved releasing the water so that Tepco can drain turbine buildings for the Nos. 2 and 3 reactors of water so radioactive it burned workers, the chief cabinet secretary said.
“We didn’t have any other alternatives,” Yukio Edano told reporters in Tokyo yesterday. “This is a measure we had to take to secure safety.”
Deliberate Release
Tepco will discharge 10,000 tons (2.6 million gallons) of water from its waste treatment facility and another 1,500 tons accumulated in pits outside reactors No. 5 and 6, Masateru Araki, a company spokesman, said yesterday.
Filtering radiation from the water would take too long and its release will help protect equipment in the buildings housing the reactors, another spokesman said yesterday.
The potential additional radiation dose to a person eating seaweed or seafood caught near the plant every day for a year would be 0.6 millisievert, the IAEA said in a statement. That compares to 0.85 millsievert from a year of exposure to granite that comprises the U.S. Capitol, according to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
Seawater Radiation
Radioactive iodine in seawater near the plant was 630 times the regulatory limit, Tepco said in a statement. The sample was taken 330 meters south of where the water was discharged.
The company released the information after being ordered by Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency to reevaluate radiation data after publishing errors.
Specialists from sensor manufacturers will follow procedures used by other utilities to determine the radioactivity of air in the plant, the spilled water, and the ocean nearby, the company said in a statement on its website.
Tepco had been struggling to stop contaminated water from reactor No. 2 from leaking into the ocean through a conduit used to take in seawater.
The company first tried to plug a crack in a power-cable storage pit near the reactor by filling it with concrete on April 2, and subsequently attempted to clog it with a mix of sawdust, newspaper and absorbent polymer used in baby diapers.
The utility plans to build an undersea silt barrier to stop the leak of radioactive fluids and help contain toxic water within the conduit, Hidehiko Nishiyama, Japan’s spokesman on nuclear safety, said in Tokyo yesterday.
A silt fence is usually used to filter dirt and solid impurities in rivers and seas during construction, said Yoshinori Hashimoto, a spokesman at Maeda Kosen Co., which makes industrial materials made from fiber, including the barriers. They are also used at the seawater intake gate of nuclear power plants, he said, adding that neither Tepco nor the government has approached the company to place an order.
To contact the reporter on this story: Tsuyoshi Inajima in Tokyo at tinajima@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Amit Prakash at aprakash1@bloomberg.net
©2011 BLOOMBERG L.P.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-05/tepco-dumping-toxic-water-angers-fishermen-stock-plunges.html
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Managing water is Fukushima priority
The Kuroshio Current may help to disperse pollutants
By Jonathan Amos
Science correspondent, BBC News
4 April 2011 Last updated at 10:14 ET
The company running the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant has begun releasing low-radioactive wastewater into the sea.
More than 10,000 tonnes will be pumped into the ocean in an operation the Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) says will take several days.
It is now three-and-a-half weeks since the colossal Tohoku quake and its associated tsunami crippled the nuclear facility.
Engineers carrying out repairs continue to make steady progress but their efforts are being frustrated by large volumes of contaminated water.
Some of this water is mildly radioactive, some of it not; but all of the water has to be removed so that equipment damaged on 11 March and the explosions that followed can be properly fixed.
The key concern remains the second reactor unit at the six-unit plant.
High levels of radiation have been found in waters in the reactor building. This is water that at some stage has been in contact with nuclear fuel and has now pooled in the basement.
Doses at 1,000 millisieverts per hour have been measured. Just 15 minutes exposure to this water would result in emergency workers at Daiichi reaching their permitted annual limit of 250 millisieverts.
This water itself is leaking into the ocean by an as yet unidentified route, and it has to be plugged.
Trace dye has been put in the water to try to see where it goes, but without success so far.
Efforts to try to fill a crack in a trench thought to be involved in the leak have also come to nought.
Tepco says the low-radioactive water it intends to deliberately release into the sea has iodine-131 levels that are about 100 times the legal limit.
But it stressed in a news conference on Monday that if people ate fish and seaweed caught near the plant every day for a year, their radiation exposure would still be just 0.6 millisieverts. Normal background radiation levels are on the order of 2 millisieverts per year.
Getting the mildly contaminated water off-site would permit the emergency staff to then start pumping out the turbine building and the much more radioactive liquid in its basement.
The Japanese government has approved the release. Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said providing safe conditions to get into the Number 2 reactor to fix equipment was a higher priority.
And while no-one wants to see radioactive releases into the ocean, Japan is at least fortunate in the way the large-scale movement of the ocean works around the country.
The Kuroshio Current is the North Pacific equivalent of the Gulf Stream in the Atlantic. It hugs the Asian continental slope until about 35 degrees North, where it is deflected due east into the deep ocean as the Kuroshio Extension.
This means pollutants in its grasp will tend over time to be driven out into the middle of the Pacific where they will become well mixed and diluted.
The map on this page has just been released by the scientists working on the European Space Agency's Goce satellite.
The spacecraft measures gravity variations across the surface of the Earth and this information, allied to sea-surface height data, can then be used to work out current directions and speed.
"We've been able to resolve the Kuroshio Current now, using just space-based methods, better than we have ever been able to do before," explained Dr Rory Bingham from Newcastle University, UK.
"The Fukushima nuclear power plant lies within 200km of the core of the Kuroshio Extension," he told BBC News.
"There are many caveats here and I cannot say for certain how the extension will impact on any dispersal of radioactive pollutants, but certainly having a detailed knowledge of the currents in this area is essential to understanding where the pollution goes."
Jonathan.Amos-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk
BBC © 2011
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12962104
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Japan nuclear plant could continue to release dangerous radiation for several months
Sunday, April 3, 10:03 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/japan-nuclear-plant-could-continue-to-release-dangerous-radiation-for-several-months/2011/04/03/AFcds3UC_story.html [with comments]
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Govt holding radiation data back / IAEA gets info, but public doesn't
The Yomiuri Shimbun
Apr. 5, 2011
The Meteorological Agency has been withholding forecasts on dispersal of radioactive substances from the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant despite making the forecasts every day, it was learned Monday.
Meteorological institutions in some European countries such as Germany and Norway have been publishing their own radiation dispersal forecasts on their Web sites based on their own meteorological observations.
Nuclear experts at home and abroad are criticizing the Japanese government for not releasing its own forecasts, raising new questions about the government's handling of information on the nuclear crisis.
The agency is making daily forecasts at the request of the International Atomic Energy Agency. When contamination by radioactive substances across national borders is feared, weather organizations of the member nations cooperate to make forecasts on possible migration of the substances.
The Meteorological Agency has been calculating its forecasts on the migration once or twice every day since March 11, when the great earthquake hit the Tohoku and Kanto regions.
The agency inputs observation data sent from the IAEA--such as the time when radioactive substances are first released, the duration of the release and how high the substances reach--into the agency's supercomputer, adding the agency's observation data, including wind directions and other data. The supercomputer then calculates the direction in which the radioactive substances will go and how much they will spread.
However, the agency has only been reporting the forecasts to the IAEA and not releasing them to the public at home.
The IAEA analyzes the data from Japan by adding observation data from other countries it similarly asked for cooperation, such as China and Russia, and notifies nuclear authorities of countries, including Japan, of the results.
Whether to announce the IAEA analysis is left to each government's judgment. The Japanese government's Nuclear Emergency Response Headquarters has so far not released the IAEA analysis.
"Japan has its own Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Ministry- operated System for Prediction of Environmental Emergency Dose Information (SPEEDI) for dispersal forecasts. The government in its Basic Disaster Management Plan defines forecasts by SPEEDI as official forecasts," a Meteorological Agency official explained.
"We don't know whether the IAEA basic data the agency uses for the forecasts really fit the actual situation. If the government releases two different sets of data, it may cause disorder in the society."
However, the SPEEDI forecast was announced only once, on March 23. The Nuclear Safety Commission has been refusing to announce subsequent forecasts. "We can't do it because the accuracy is still low," Seiji Shiroya, a commission member said.
© The Yomiuri Shimbun
http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/T110404004911.htm
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Japan says not expanding nuclear zone for now
Mon Apr 4, 2011 4:22pm EDT
VIENNA, April 4 (Reuters) - Japan is not planning to expand an evacuation zone around a stricken nuclear reactor right now but this decision is not set in stone, a senior Japanese nuclear official said in Vienna on Monday.
Japan's devastating quake and tsunami three weeks ago heavily damaged the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, forcing the government to create a 20-km (12 miles) evacuation zone around the site.
"For the time being we are not going to. But it does not mean in the future we may (not) change that," Koichiro Nakamura, a deputy director general of Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA), told reporters.
(Reporting by Sylvia Westall)
© Copyright 2011 Thomson Reuters
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/04/japan-nuclear-evacuation-idUSLDE73326Z20110404
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Japan changes scope of restrictions on farm products
April 4, 2011
http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20110404p2g00m0dm078000c.html
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Nuclear Crisis Puts 50 U.S. Aides in Japan to Help, Test Readiness at Home
Apr 3, 2011 5:21 PM CT
More than 50 U.S. nuclear scientists, engineers and aides are in Japan helping its government struggling to control a crippled power plant. In the process, they are training for any future crisis at home.
[...]
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-03/nuclear-crisis-puts-50-u-s-aides-in-japan-testing-own-readiness.html
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Japan seeks Russian help to end nuclear crisis
Mon Apr 4, 2011 6:32pm EDT
(Reuters) - Japan has asked nuclear superpower Russia to send a special radiation treatment ship used to decommission nuclear submarines as it fights to contain the world's worst atomic crisis since Chernobyl, Japanese media said late on Monday.
[...]
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/04/us-japan-idUSTRE72A0SS20110404
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Powering Down in Japan
By JAMES SIMMS
APRIL 4, 2011, 4:08 A.M. ET
A key question for Japan's economy is how much electricity it will have in the peak summer months.
The region around Tokyo, which accounts for 40% of the nation's economy, most of Japan Inc.'s head offices and a third of the population, can barely meet peak demand now. In the event of a hot summer, there may only be enough electricity to supply three-quarters of demand. Shortfalls could last months, or years.
So far, rolling blackouts, conservation, lower industrial demand and spring weather have prevented the situation from turning dire. But the future isn't bright.
First, four of the six reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant are finished. The other two reactors might be as well, simply by association. Other nuclear plants that powered down after the March earthquake and those that were already off line for regular maintenance may struggle to get local political approval to soon fire up again.
Fixing nuclear-facility vulnerabilities such as inadequate backup cooling systems, as well as earthquake- and tsunami-proofing, could take years and billions of dollars. And until this month, barely-contained spent uranium fuel pools weren't a focus. They are now.
Plants across Japan are sitting on 13,500 tons of spent fuel, much of that in pools like those that proved hazardous in Fukushima. Reactors are forecast to generate that much again over the next decade, Japan's Federation of Electric Power Companies said last year.
Four years after a 2007 quake, three of seven reactors in the Kashiwazaki Kariwa nuclear plant operated by Tokyo Electric Power Co. still aren't generating power. In August, two more Kashiwazaki reactors are set to shut down for scheduled maintenance. All told, just the nuclear-power shortfall may mean 23% of Tepco's generating capacity would be out. That excludes damaged conventional plants—which may not return to use as quickly as the company's optimistic assumptions—and any shortfall in electricity making it harder to operate pump-type hydroelectric stations or lack of rainfall hurting reservoir levels at regular dams.
Other types of generation such as natural gas and oil are used for peak periods, but nuclear plants operate as continuously as possible to meet baseload demand. When it comes to electricity, the heat will be on for the foreseeable future.
Write to James Simms at james.simms@dowjones.com
Copyright ©2011 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703712504576240544233310506.html [with comments]
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What Japan's disaster tells us about peak oil
Fuel is unloaded at Ishinomaki port in Miyagi, Japan. The country has been buying up oil supplies since the earthquake disrupted its nuclear power industry.
Photograph: Sankei/Getty Images
OurWorld 2.0: Life for survivors after the Japanese earthquake and tsunami gives a clue to what a peak oil world would look like
Brendan Barrett for OurWorld 2.0
guardian.co.uk, Monday 4 April 2011 11.03 BST
For large parts of eastern Japan that were not directly hit by the tsunami on 11 March 2011, including the nation's capital, the current state of affairs feels very much like a dry-run for peak oil [ http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/peak-oil ]. This is not to belittle the tragic loss of life and the dire situation facing many survivors left without homes and livelihoods. Rather, the aim here is to reflect upon the post-disaster events and compare them with those normally associated with the worst-case scenarios for peak oil.
The earthquake and tsunami affected six of the 28 oil refineries [ http://af.reuters.com/article/energyOilNews/idAFL3E7EB2HO20110322 ] in Japan and immediately petrol rationing was introduced with a maximum of 20 litres per car (in some instances as low as 5 litres). On 14 March, the government allowed the oil industry to release 3 days' worth of oil [ http://eneken.ieej.or.jp/en/ ] from stockpiles and on 22 March an additional 22 days' worth of oil was released.
The Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), which serves a population of 44.5 million, lost one quarter of its supply capacity [ http://www.shimbun.denki.or.jp/en/news/20110317_01.html ] as a result of the quake, through the closedown of its two Fukushima nuclear power plants (Dai-ichi and Dai-ni), as well as eight fossil fuel based thermal power stations. Subsequently, from 14 March 2011 onwards, TEPCO was forced to implement a series of scheduled outages across the Kanto region (the prefectures of Gunma, Tochigi, Ibaraki, Saitama, Tokyo, Chiba, and Kanagawa).
While the thermal power stations may restart operations soon, the overall shortfall will become even more difficult to manage over the summer period when air conditioning is utilized. The reality is that these power cuts could continue for years, especially since the one of the two Fukushima nuclear plants has effectively become a pile of radioactive scrap.
Related to this, when the Tokyo Metropolitican Government began to announce levels of radioactive contamination of drinking water above permissible levels, this was immediately followed by the rapid sell-out of bottled water, even after the levels dropped again. When bottled water is on sale in local convenience stores after some restocking took place, each customer is only allowed to purchase one 2 litre bottle.
Immediately after the quake, supermarkets outside the disaster area in Tokyo and other major cities began to sell out of foodstuffs, including various instant meals. The electrical appliance stores sold out of batteries, flashlights and portable radios.
As we all know, the twin natural and human tragedies are having impacts beyond the Tohoku region where Fukushima lies, and the Greater Tokyo area. It has been difficult for Japan's notoriously efficient industries to maintain production, given that they rely on just-in-time systems [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-in-time_%28business%29 ] and which have supply plants (for needed parts) that are located in the zone impacted by these combined disasters. One example is in car production [ http://www.autoexpress.co.uk/news/autoexpressnews/265687/japanese_earthquake_hits_car_production.html ], where major firms have had to suspend work at their factories when key parts are no longer available from the affected region. The fragility of this system of industrial production is glaringly obvious and it is something that peak oil commentators [ http://www.postpeakliving.com/peak-oil-primer ] have warned of multiple times.
These food and bottled water shortages, power cuts, fuel-rationing and breakdowns in just-in-time manufacturing have been anticipated by those who take peak oil seriously. It is almost as if eastern Japan is experiencing a peak oil rehearsal, although other regions of Japan are virtually unaffected. If proponents of peak oil [ http://www.guardian.co.uk/global/2011/mar/28/oil-reserves-shell-supply ] are correct, then the rest of the world may experience something similar within the next 5 to 10 years, and hence it is important that we learn valuable lessons from Japan's response to the current circumstances.
What makes the current situation different from peak oil?
Under a peak oil scenario, the entire world (not just one country) would be affected by a continuous decline in global oil production. The rate of that decline is the key factor. If the rate is very gradual (a few percent points each year), then economies and their food and energy production and distribution systems in particular will have more time to adapt.
In such circumstances, we could envisage a significant decline in the flow of goods and people across the globe — a slowing or a potentially grinding halt. For a country like Japan that relies heavily on the import of food, having only 40% self-sufficiency, the real peak oil scenario would have dire impacts.
Under the present situation, Japan can still rely on imports to alleviate food supply problems. This is fortunate as over 600 farms, 125 harbours and 2,333 fishing vessels [ http://www.maff.go.jp/e/quake/press_110325-9.html ] were destroyed by the tsunami, not to mention the thousands of people who made their livelihoods from agriculture and fishing who are either deceased or displaced. Furthermore, the 20-30 km zone around the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant may not be used for food production for some time to come and the good reputations of those areas for providing clean produce may take even longer to be restored.
In a global peak oil scenario, it is highly likely that food prices would increase significantly. To some extent this is happening. For instance, in February 2011 it was reported that food prices reached a record high due to poor harvests, rising oil prices (at US$105 per barrel) and increasing demand for foodstuffs due to rising population and incomes. The conflict in Libya was predicted to further exacerbate the food and oil prices. In fact, conflict and civil unrest in oil producing countries is another facet of various peak oil scenarios as nations scramble for the remaining resources. It is something that Richard Heinberg describes as the "last one standing [ http://usa.mediamonitors.net/content/view/full/9427/ ]" scenario in which powerful countries will use their assets to promote their own survival at the expense of everyone else.
So in the current predicament facing Japan, the situation is ameliorated by the ability of different nations to offer support and continue trading (for instance, Evian is selling a lot of bottled water to Japan at the moment). This certainly would be more difficult under some of the extreme peak oil scenarios, where rapid oil decline is involved.
Lessons from Japan
While the consequences of the current disaster for Japan have been tragic in terms of the loss of life and while it is clear that the emotional, psychological and economic impacts are enormous, there are real signs of hope.
The first important lesson to recognize is the way that Japan's leaders acted rapidly and responsibly. We have already indicated that fuel rationing was in place from 12 March 2011. The reality is that Japan is one of the most disaster-prepared nations in the world and regularly undertakes wide-scale drills. This practice proved to be of vital importance in helping people, communities and institutions cope with the major challenges that they have had to face.
Government officials quickly recognized that people were hoarding food supplies and began to publicly request that they only buy what they need. This was followed up by a series of public service announcements by the Japan Ad Council under theme of "What I can do now."
The Minister in charge of consumer affairs, Renho Murata [ http://www.japantoday.com/category/national/view/renho-calls-on-consumers-not-to-buy-up-hoard-daily-necessities ], frequently called on people not to panic buy and hoard food. She argued that this kind of activity was undermining the ability to provide relief supplies to the quake hit areas. At the same time, the general public and the private sector in the Kanto region were encouraged to comply with the scheduled power outages and to significantly reduce their energy consumption. Everybody responded positively – keen to play their part in solving this problem.
Prime Minister Naoto Kan in particular made an appeal [ http://www.kantei.go.jp/foreign/kan/statement/201103/13message_e.html ] to the people of Japan on 13 March 2011 when he said, "We Japanese have overcome many very trying situations in the past to create our modern society of peace and prosperity. I firmly believe that through our citizens working together to respond to this great earthquake and tsunami, we will certainly be able to overcome this crisis."
This message has been echoed across the media and the Japanese public has responded by showing calmness, patience, respect for each other and mutual support. If anything, they have exemplified Richard Heinberg's power down scenario — the path of cooperation, conservation and sharing. Whether they can hold true to this path over a prolonged period of time remains to be seen.
In the global Transition Movement, they often refer to the "head, heart and hand" approach to coping with peak oil and climate change, as discussed in Rob Hopkin's Transition Handbook [ http://transitionculture.org/shop/the-transition-handbook/ ]. Put simply, the head signifies the exploration needed about how we can re-orient our lives to become more local and small scale as our awareness increases of the energy crisis we are heading into. The heart symbolizes how we can generate positive visions of the future and how they can be harnessed to overcome the feelings of powerlessness in the face of these immense challenges. The hands are a representation about understanding how the transition model can be employed in practice for specific communities.
For many communities in eastern Japan, the current circumstances represent the first time they have had to consider questions about food and energy security. The vast majority appear, quite naturally, to share the overwhelming desire to get back to normal, back to the way things were before. But there are also signs of the head, heart and hand approach as many Japanese commentators are asking questions about how will develop in the future.
If Japan is to build back better, then it should perhaps do so by building more resilient, more locally oriented communities in the areas affected by the quake and tsunami, and beyond. In fact, this is a chance to reconsider completely the development path for Japan towards one that is less vulnerable, less reliant upon fossil fuels, and ideally a low carbon society.
To borrow the words of Prime Minister Kan once again when he called upon his compatriots:
"Through this resolve, let us all now — each and every individual — firmly reinforce our bonds with our families, friends, and communities, overcoming this crisis to once more build an even better Japan."
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2011
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/apr/04/japan-disaster-peak-oil [with comments]
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More than one in 10 nuclear power plants at risk from earthquakes
Armenia's Metsamor plant is susceptible to quakes
Many stations are in countries that would be less able than Japan to cope with disasters
By Jonathan Owen
Sunday, 3 April 2011
Scores of nuclear power plants worldwide are at risk from tsunamis or earthquakes similar to the natural disasters that crippled Japan's Fukushima reactors, according to new research. Many at-risk plants are in countries less able to cope with a disaster than Japan, experts have warned.
Seventy-six operating power stations in Japan, Taiwan, China, South Korea, India, Pakistan and the US are located in areas close to coastlines deemed vulnerable to tsunamis.
Of 442 nuclear power stations globally, more than one in 10are situated in places deemed to be at high or extreme risk of earthquakes – in Japan, the US, Taiwan, Armenia and Slovenia – according to a new study by the analysts Maplecroft.
Helen Hodge, Maplecroft's natural hazards analyst, said: "Although Japanese nuclear facilities are particularly exposed, other countries could also face similar risks. South Korea, Taiwan, southern China, India, Pakistan and the west coast of the US have operating or planned nuclear facilities on tsunami-exposed coastlines, while nuclear sites in areas of high or extreme risk of earthquakes can be found in western US, Taiwan, Armenia, Iran and Slovenia."
Emeritus Professor Keith Barnham, a physicist from Imperial College London, commented: "Japan is one of the most advanced technological counties but one can see the problems they are having in coping with the aftermath. One fears for the reactors planned or operational in the environmentally unsafe areas of less technologically developed countries."
Nuclear safety experts cite the example of an ageing Russian-built nuclear reactor only 30km from the Armenian capital, Yerevan. In December 1988, a powerful earthquake, which led to the deaths of at least 25,000 people, occurred in north-west Armenia. The following year, the Metsamor nuclear plant was shut down due to safety concerns regarding "seismic vulnerability". Although one of its reactors is now being decommissioned, another remains operational. The International Atomic Energy Association (IAEA) has been involved in safety improvements at the plant for more than a decade.
But, according to the World Nuclear Association, "The present Metsamor plant is a concern to the European Union and to neighbouring Turkey, 16km away. There have been various calls to shut it down ... but Armenia is very dependent on it and has said that it will remain open until a replacement is commissioned."
The risks of future natural disasters have been recognised by the IAEA in recent years, which set up the International Seismic Safety Centre in 2008. Its safety guidelines on earthquakes and tsunamis are being revised following the incident at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.
The Japanese crisis has reignited the debate over nuclear safety. As a result, several nations, including Italy, Switzerland and Germany, have put new reactor plans on hold. The nuclear plant at Fukushimi was crippled after an earthquake and tsunami devastated north-east Japan last month.
James Acton, nuclear expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, commented: "The key question is whether we have correctly predicted the risk that a reactor could be hit by a disaster (natural or man-made) that is bigger than it is designed to withstand. This issue should be urgently reviewed by all states with reactors."
Jeremy Gordon, editor of World Nuclear News, predicted there would be a "step change" in efforts to improve safety. "While it's true that many, if not most countries, would be less prepared than Japan to face an unprecedented natural disaster and nuclear accident on this scale," he said, "the country involved in future would likely have a far better practical support network from other governments and practical experts in industry."
Dr Gordon Woo, an IAEA consultant, said there was already a "significant degree" of seismic technology transfer by the IAEA to less advanced nations. He predicted this would increase after the Japanese disaster.
©independent.co.uk
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/more-than-one-in-10-nuclear-power-plants-at-risk-from-earthquakes-2260817.html [with comments]
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Germany's radioactive boars a legacy of Chernobyl
2011-04-04 14:20:00
For a look at just how long radioactivity can hang around, consider Germany's wild boars.
A quarter century after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in the Soviet Union carried a cloud of radiation across Europe, these animals are radioactive enough that people are urged not to eat them. And the mushrooms the pigs dine on aren't fit for consumption either.
Germany's experience shows what could await Japan — if the problems at the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant get any worse.
The German boars roam in forests nearly 950 miles (1,500 kilometers ) from Chernobyl. Yet, the amount of radioactive cesium-137 within their tissue often registers dozens of times beyond the recommended limit for consumption and thousands of times above normal.
"We still feel the consequences of Chernobyl's fallout here," said Christian Kueppers, a radiation expert at Germany's Institute for Applied Ecology in Freiburg.
"The contamination won't go away any time soon — with cesium's half-life being roughly 30 years, the radioactivity will only slightly decrease in the coming years."
Cesium can build up in the body and high levels are thought to be a risk for various other cancers. Still, researchers who studied Chernobyl could not find an increase in cancers that might be linked to cesium.
Cesium also accumulates over time in the soil, which makes boars most susceptible They snuffle through forest soil with their snouts and feed on the kinds of mushroom that tend to store radioactivity, Environment Ministry spokesman Thomas Hagbeck said.
The problem is so common that now all wild boars bagged by hunters in the affected regions have to be checked for radiation. Government compensation to hunters whose quarry has to be destroyed has added up to euro460,000 ($650,000) over the past 12 months, Hagbeck said.
"It's really sad when you have to throw out meat that is normally extraordinarily tasty," said Joachim Reddemann, managing director of Bavaria state's hunting association.
Thousands of wild boars killed in southern Germany every year register unacceptable levels of radiation. It's calculated in becquerels, a measurement of radiation given off. Anything beyond 600 becquerels per kilogram isn't recommended, according to Germany's Federal Office for Radiation Protection.
Normal meat has an average contamination of 0.5 becquerel per kilogram, and a German would normally consume about 100 becquerels per year from plants and dairy products, the agency said.
About 2 percent of the 50,000 boars hunted are above the legal radioactivity limit, Reddemann said. And the government's radiation protection office says some mushrooms have registered up to 20 times the legal cesium limit.
Even farther away in France, there is still soil contamination, though levels have dropped significantly. It is now rare to find unsafe levels of cesium in boars and mushrooms, said radiation expert Philippe Renaud of France's Institute of Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety.
In Austria, too, traces of radioactive cesium remain in the soil. Along with boars and mushrooms, deer have been affected — some testing at five times the legal limit, that country's environment agency says.
Japan's Fukushima plant has so far not leaked nearly as much radiation as Chernobyl, but authorities there have banned the sale of milk, spinach, cabbage and other products from surrounding regions as a precaution.
European officials insist that occasionally eating contaminated boar meat or mushrooms does not pose an immediate health risk. Public health agencies are typically conservative in setting limits for radioactivity in food.
Eating 200 grams of mushrooms tested seven times above the legal cesium limit, for example, would amount to the same exposure as the altitude radiation taken in during a 2,000-mile flight, according to Germany's Office for Radiation Protection.
In Austria, authorities say that eating the unlikely amount of 2 pounds of contaminated boar meat that is 10 times above the legal cesium limit would amount to two-thirds of an adult's normal annual radiation intake by food.
However, the possibility of exposure will not be going away anytime soon.
"We assume that wild game will still be similarly affected until 2025 and then very slowly recede," said Reddemann, of Bavaria's hunting association. "The problem will certainly still be around for the next 100 years, and Chernobyl will still be an issue for our children and grandchildren."
Veronika Oleksyn in Vienna and Camille Rustici in Paris contributed to this report.
© Copyright Sify Technologies Ltd, 2011
http://www.sify.com/news/germany-s-radioactive-boars-a-legacy-of-chernobyl-news-environment+and+nature-leefkpghcdj.html
http://blogs.nature.com/news/thegreatbeyond/2011/04/fukushima_update_tepco_forced.html [no comments yet]
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Tepco Dumps Radioactive Water Into Sea on Safety Concerns
Apr 4, 2011 1:20 PM CT
Tokyo Electric Power Co. began dumping radioactive water from its crippled Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear station into the sea so that it would have a place to store more highly contaminated water.
The government approved the discharge so that Tepco, as the utility is known, can drain turbine buildings for the Nos. 2 and 3 reactors of water so radioactive it burned workers, the chief cabinet secretary said.
“We didn’t have any other alternatives,” Yukio Edano told reporters in Tokyo. “This is a measure we had to take to secure safety.”
Tepco has been battling to restart cooling pumps that were knocked out by a March 11 quake and tsunami, resulting in a partial meltdown of some of the plant’s six reactors. Tokyo Electric plans to release 11,500 tons of water containing radioactive iodine levels about 100 times the regulatory limit.
“Until they get rid of that water they can’t get in there to sort out the pumps,” Robin Grimes, a professor of materials physics at Imperial College in London, said by telephone. “If they’re going against regulatory guidelines, that’s definitely not something you’d want to do unless you had very little choice. It’s the least worst option.”
[...]
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-03/tokyo-electric-s-plan-to-plug-leaking-radioactive-water-with-sawdust-fails.html
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Japan nuke plant dumps radioactive water into sea
In this Saturday, April 2, 2011 photo released by Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) via Kyodo News, leaking radioactive contaminated water drain through crack of a maintenance pit, right, into the sea, near the Unit 2 reactor of Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear nuclear power plant in Okumamachi, Fukushima Prefecture, northeastern Japan. Highly radioactive water was leaking into the sea Saturday from a crack discovered at the nuclear power plant destabilized by last month's earthquake and tsunami, a new setback as frustrated survivors of the disasters complained that Japan's government was paying too much attention to the nuclear crisis. (AP Photo/Tokyo Electric Power Co. via Kyodo News)
April 4, 2011
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2011/04/03/international/i033301D73.DTL [with comments]
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Tepco Dumping Toxic Water Angers Fishermen; Stock Plunges
By Tsuyoshi Inajima - Apr 4, 2011 9:08 PM CT
Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s decision to dump radioactive water from its crippled Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear station into the sea angered fishermen and pushed the Japanese utility’s shares to a record low.
The company known as Tepco plunged as much as 15 percent to the lowest since its listing in August 1951. A fishing industry group in Fukushima prefecture asked the utility to stop releasing contaminated water, and radioactive iodine and cesium were found in fish caught in [waters] north of the Japanese capital.
Tepco began discharging 11,500 tons of water yesterday, enough to fill 4 1/2 Olympic-sized swimming pools, to make room to store more highly contaminated fluids. The United Nations nuclear watchdog said the partial meltdown at the station was a result of “errors” from the time a March 11 quake and tsunami knocked out pumps used to cool reactors and spent fuel.
“Such an accident should not have happened,” Denis Flory, deputy director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said at a press briefing in Vienna yesterday. “Something was not done from the very beginning.”
The stock plunged 10 percent to 398 yen, as of 10:20 a.m. on the Tokyo Stock Exchange. The shares fell to 376 yen earlier. Tepco has lost 81 percent of its value since March 10, the day before the magnitude-9 earthquake and tsunami struck northeast Japan, compared with a 8.5 percent drop in the Topix index.
“The news of the discharge of contaminated water was negatively received while there is no sign for the situation to settle down,” said Satoshi Yuzaki, Tokyo-based head of the market information department at Takagi Securities Co.
Earnings Delayed
Tepco has delayed its full-year earnings report as it assesses the financial impact of the earthquake, the company said in a faxed statement today, without setting a date.
A fishing industry group in Fukushima prefecture has asked Tepco to stop releasing radioactive water into the sea near the Dai-Ichi power plant, NHK reported on its website. Radioactive iodine and cesium were found in fish caught off the coast of Ibaraki, north of Tokyo, the Yomiuri newspaper reported, citing a local fishery cooperative.
The fish aren’t on the market because sand-eel fishing was discontinued after the March 11 earthquake, the report said.
The Japanese government approved releasing the water so that Tepco can drain turbine buildings for the Nos. 2 and 3 reactors of water so radioactive it burned workers, the chief cabinet secretary said.
“We didn’t have any other alternatives,” Yukio Edano told reporters in Tokyo yesterday. “This is a measure we had to take to secure safety.”
Deliberate Release
Tepco will discharge 10,000 tons (2.6 million gallons) of water from its waste treatment facility and another 1,500 tons accumulated in pits outside reactors No. 5 and 6, Masateru Araki, a company spokesman, said yesterday.
Filtering radiation from the water would take too long and its release will help protect equipment in the buildings housing the reactors, another spokesman said yesterday.
The potential additional radiation dose to a person eating seaweed or seafood caught near the plant every day for a year would be 0.6 millisievert, the IAEA said in a statement. That compares to 0.85 millsievert from a year of exposure to granite that comprises the U.S. Capitol, according to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
Seawater Radiation
Radioactive iodine in seawater near the plant was 630 times the regulatory limit, Tepco said in a statement. The sample was taken 330 meters south of where the water was discharged.
The company released the information after being ordered by Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency to reevaluate radiation data after publishing errors.
Specialists from sensor manufacturers will follow procedures used by other utilities to determine the radioactivity of air in the plant, the spilled water, and the ocean nearby, the company said in a statement on its website.
Tepco had been struggling to stop contaminated water from reactor No. 2 from leaking into the ocean through a conduit used to take in seawater.
The company first tried to plug a crack in a power-cable storage pit near the reactor by filling it with concrete on April 2, and subsequently attempted to clog it with a mix of sawdust, newspaper and absorbent polymer used in baby diapers.
The utility plans to build an undersea silt barrier to stop the leak of radioactive fluids and help contain toxic water within the conduit, Hidehiko Nishiyama, Japan’s spokesman on nuclear safety, said in Tokyo yesterday.
A silt fence is usually used to filter dirt and solid impurities in rivers and seas during construction, said Yoshinori Hashimoto, a spokesman at Maeda Kosen Co., which makes industrial materials made from fiber, including the barriers. They are also used at the seawater intake gate of nuclear power plants, he said, adding that neither Tepco nor the government has approached the company to place an order.
To contact the reporter on this story: Tsuyoshi Inajima in Tokyo at tinajima@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Amit Prakash at aprakash1@bloomberg.net
©2011 BLOOMBERG L.P.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-05/tepco-dumping-toxic-water-angers-fishermen-stock-plunges.html
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Managing water is Fukushima priority
The Kuroshio Current may help to disperse pollutants
By Jonathan Amos
Science correspondent, BBC News
4 April 2011 Last updated at 10:14 ET
The company running the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant has begun releasing low-radioactive wastewater into the sea.
More than 10,000 tonnes will be pumped into the ocean in an operation the Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) says will take several days.
It is now three-and-a-half weeks since the colossal Tohoku quake and its associated tsunami crippled the nuclear facility.
Engineers carrying out repairs continue to make steady progress but their efforts are being frustrated by large volumes of contaminated water.
Some of this water is mildly radioactive, some of it not; but all of the water has to be removed so that equipment damaged on 11 March and the explosions that followed can be properly fixed.
The key concern remains the second reactor unit at the six-unit plant.
High levels of radiation have been found in waters in the reactor building. This is water that at some stage has been in contact with nuclear fuel and has now pooled in the basement.
Doses at 1,000 millisieverts per hour have been measured. Just 15 minutes exposure to this water would result in emergency workers at Daiichi reaching their permitted annual limit of 250 millisieverts.
This water itself is leaking into the ocean by an as yet unidentified route, and it has to be plugged.
Trace dye has been put in the water to try to see where it goes, but without success so far.
Efforts to try to fill a crack in a trench thought to be involved in the leak have also come to nought.
Tepco says the low-radioactive water it intends to deliberately release into the sea has iodine-131 levels that are about 100 times the legal limit.
But it stressed in a news conference on Monday that if people ate fish and seaweed caught near the plant every day for a year, their radiation exposure would still be just 0.6 millisieverts. Normal background radiation levels are on the order of 2 millisieverts per year.
Getting the mildly contaminated water off-site would permit the emergency staff to then start pumping out the turbine building and the much more radioactive liquid in its basement.
The Japanese government has approved the release. Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said providing safe conditions to get into the Number 2 reactor to fix equipment was a higher priority.
And while no-one wants to see radioactive releases into the ocean, Japan is at least fortunate in the way the large-scale movement of the ocean works around the country.
The Kuroshio Current is the North Pacific equivalent of the Gulf Stream in the Atlantic. It hugs the Asian continental slope until about 35 degrees North, where it is deflected due east into the deep ocean as the Kuroshio Extension.
This means pollutants in its grasp will tend over time to be driven out into the middle of the Pacific where they will become well mixed and diluted.
The map on this page has just been released by the scientists working on the European Space Agency's Goce satellite.
The spacecraft measures gravity variations across the surface of the Earth and this information, allied to sea-surface height data, can then be used to work out current directions and speed.
"We've been able to resolve the Kuroshio Current now, using just space-based methods, better than we have ever been able to do before," explained Dr Rory Bingham from Newcastle University, UK.
"The Fukushima nuclear power plant lies within 200km of the core of the Kuroshio Extension," he told BBC News.
"There are many caveats here and I cannot say for certain how the extension will impact on any dispersal of radioactive pollutants, but certainly having a detailed knowledge of the currents in this area is essential to understanding where the pollution goes."
Jonathan.Amos-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk
BBC © 2011
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12962104
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Japan nuclear plant could continue to release dangerous radiation for several months
Sunday, April 3, 10:03 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/japan-nuclear-plant-could-continue-to-release-dangerous-radiation-for-several-months/2011/04/03/AFcds3UC_story.html [with comments]
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Govt holding radiation data back / IAEA gets info, but public doesn't
The Yomiuri Shimbun
Apr. 5, 2011
The Meteorological Agency has been withholding forecasts on dispersal of radioactive substances from the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant despite making the forecasts every day, it was learned Monday.
Meteorological institutions in some European countries such as Germany and Norway have been publishing their own radiation dispersal forecasts on their Web sites based on their own meteorological observations.
Nuclear experts at home and abroad are criticizing the Japanese government for not releasing its own forecasts, raising new questions about the government's handling of information on the nuclear crisis.
The agency is making daily forecasts at the request of the International Atomic Energy Agency. When contamination by radioactive substances across national borders is feared, weather organizations of the member nations cooperate to make forecasts on possible migration of the substances.
The Meteorological Agency has been calculating its forecasts on the migration once or twice every day since March 11, when the great earthquake hit the Tohoku and Kanto regions.
The agency inputs observation data sent from the IAEA--such as the time when radioactive substances are first released, the duration of the release and how high the substances reach--into the agency's supercomputer, adding the agency's observation data, including wind directions and other data. The supercomputer then calculates the direction in which the radioactive substances will go and how much they will spread.
However, the agency has only been reporting the forecasts to the IAEA and not releasing them to the public at home.
The IAEA analyzes the data from Japan by adding observation data from other countries it similarly asked for cooperation, such as China and Russia, and notifies nuclear authorities of countries, including Japan, of the results.
Whether to announce the IAEA analysis is left to each government's judgment. The Japanese government's Nuclear Emergency Response Headquarters has so far not released the IAEA analysis.
"Japan has its own Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Ministry- operated System for Prediction of Environmental Emergency Dose Information (SPEEDI) for dispersal forecasts. The government in its Basic Disaster Management Plan defines forecasts by SPEEDI as official forecasts," a Meteorological Agency official explained.
"We don't know whether the IAEA basic data the agency uses for the forecasts really fit the actual situation. If the government releases two different sets of data, it may cause disorder in the society."
However, the SPEEDI forecast was announced only once, on March 23. The Nuclear Safety Commission has been refusing to announce subsequent forecasts. "We can't do it because the accuracy is still low," Seiji Shiroya, a commission member said.
© The Yomiuri Shimbun
http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/T110404004911.htm
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Japan says not expanding nuclear zone for now
Mon Apr 4, 2011 4:22pm EDT
VIENNA, April 4 (Reuters) - Japan is not planning to expand an evacuation zone around a stricken nuclear reactor right now but this decision is not set in stone, a senior Japanese nuclear official said in Vienna on Monday.
Japan's devastating quake and tsunami three weeks ago heavily damaged the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, forcing the government to create a 20-km (12 miles) evacuation zone around the site.
"For the time being we are not going to. But it does not mean in the future we may (not) change that," Koichiro Nakamura, a deputy director general of Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA), told reporters.
(Reporting by Sylvia Westall)
© Copyright 2011 Thomson Reuters
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/04/japan-nuclear-evacuation-idUSLDE73326Z20110404
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Japan changes scope of restrictions on farm products
April 4, 2011
http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20110404p2g00m0dm078000c.html
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Nuclear Crisis Puts 50 U.S. Aides in Japan to Help, Test Readiness at Home
Apr 3, 2011 5:21 PM CT
More than 50 U.S. nuclear scientists, engineers and aides are in Japan helping its government struggling to control a crippled power plant. In the process, they are training for any future crisis at home.
[...]
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-03/nuclear-crisis-puts-50-u-s-aides-in-japan-testing-own-readiness.html
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Japan seeks Russian help to end nuclear crisis
Mon Apr 4, 2011 6:32pm EDT
(Reuters) - Japan has asked nuclear superpower Russia to send a special radiation treatment ship used to decommission nuclear submarines as it fights to contain the world's worst atomic crisis since Chernobyl, Japanese media said late on Monday.
[...]
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/04/us-japan-idUSTRE72A0SS20110404
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Powering Down in Japan
By JAMES SIMMS
APRIL 4, 2011, 4:08 A.M. ET
A key question for Japan's economy is how much electricity it will have in the peak summer months.
The region around Tokyo, which accounts for 40% of the nation's economy, most of Japan Inc.'s head offices and a third of the population, can barely meet peak demand now. In the event of a hot summer, there may only be enough electricity to supply three-quarters of demand. Shortfalls could last months, or years.
So far, rolling blackouts, conservation, lower industrial demand and spring weather have prevented the situation from turning dire. But the future isn't bright.
First, four of the six reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant are finished. The other two reactors might be as well, simply by association. Other nuclear plants that powered down after the March earthquake and those that were already off line for regular maintenance may struggle to get local political approval to soon fire up again.
Fixing nuclear-facility vulnerabilities such as inadequate backup cooling systems, as well as earthquake- and tsunami-proofing, could take years and billions of dollars. And until this month, barely-contained spent uranium fuel pools weren't a focus. They are now.
Plants across Japan are sitting on 13,500 tons of spent fuel, much of that in pools like those that proved hazardous in Fukushima. Reactors are forecast to generate that much again over the next decade, Japan's Federation of Electric Power Companies said last year.
Four years after a 2007 quake, three of seven reactors in the Kashiwazaki Kariwa nuclear plant operated by Tokyo Electric Power Co. still aren't generating power. In August, two more Kashiwazaki reactors are set to shut down for scheduled maintenance. All told, just the nuclear-power shortfall may mean 23% of Tepco's generating capacity would be out. That excludes damaged conventional plants—which may not return to use as quickly as the company's optimistic assumptions—and any shortfall in electricity making it harder to operate pump-type hydroelectric stations or lack of rainfall hurting reservoir levels at regular dams.
Other types of generation such as natural gas and oil are used for peak periods, but nuclear plants operate as continuously as possible to meet baseload demand. When it comes to electricity, the heat will be on for the foreseeable future.
Write to James Simms at james.simms@dowjones.com
Copyright ©2011 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703712504576240544233310506.html [with comments]
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What Japan's disaster tells us about peak oil
Fuel is unloaded at Ishinomaki port in Miyagi, Japan. The country has been buying up oil supplies since the earthquake disrupted its nuclear power industry.
Photograph: Sankei/Getty Images
OurWorld 2.0: Life for survivors after the Japanese earthquake and tsunami gives a clue to what a peak oil world would look like
Brendan Barrett for OurWorld 2.0
guardian.co.uk, Monday 4 April 2011 11.03 BST
For large parts of eastern Japan that were not directly hit by the tsunami on 11 March 2011, including the nation's capital, the current state of affairs feels very much like a dry-run for peak oil [ http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/peak-oil ]. This is not to belittle the tragic loss of life and the dire situation facing many survivors left without homes and livelihoods. Rather, the aim here is to reflect upon the post-disaster events and compare them with those normally associated with the worst-case scenarios for peak oil.
The earthquake and tsunami affected six of the 28 oil refineries [ http://af.reuters.com/article/energyOilNews/idAFL3E7EB2HO20110322 ] in Japan and immediately petrol rationing was introduced with a maximum of 20 litres per car (in some instances as low as 5 litres). On 14 March, the government allowed the oil industry to release 3 days' worth of oil [ http://eneken.ieej.or.jp/en/ ] from stockpiles and on 22 March an additional 22 days' worth of oil was released.
The Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), which serves a population of 44.5 million, lost one quarter of its supply capacity [ http://www.shimbun.denki.or.jp/en/news/20110317_01.html ] as a result of the quake, through the closedown of its two Fukushima nuclear power plants (Dai-ichi and Dai-ni), as well as eight fossil fuel based thermal power stations. Subsequently, from 14 March 2011 onwards, TEPCO was forced to implement a series of scheduled outages across the Kanto region (the prefectures of Gunma, Tochigi, Ibaraki, Saitama, Tokyo, Chiba, and Kanagawa).
While the thermal power stations may restart operations soon, the overall shortfall will become even more difficult to manage over the summer period when air conditioning is utilized. The reality is that these power cuts could continue for years, especially since the one of the two Fukushima nuclear plants has effectively become a pile of radioactive scrap.
Related to this, when the Tokyo Metropolitican Government began to announce levels of radioactive contamination of drinking water above permissible levels, this was immediately followed by the rapid sell-out of bottled water, even after the levels dropped again. When bottled water is on sale in local convenience stores after some restocking took place, each customer is only allowed to purchase one 2 litre bottle.
Immediately after the quake, supermarkets outside the disaster area in Tokyo and other major cities began to sell out of foodstuffs, including various instant meals. The electrical appliance stores sold out of batteries, flashlights and portable radios.
As we all know, the twin natural and human tragedies are having impacts beyond the Tohoku region where Fukushima lies, and the Greater Tokyo area. It has been difficult for Japan's notoriously efficient industries to maintain production, given that they rely on just-in-time systems [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-in-time_%28business%29 ] and which have supply plants (for needed parts) that are located in the zone impacted by these combined disasters. One example is in car production [ http://www.autoexpress.co.uk/news/autoexpressnews/265687/japanese_earthquake_hits_car_production.html ], where major firms have had to suspend work at their factories when key parts are no longer available from the affected region. The fragility of this system of industrial production is glaringly obvious and it is something that peak oil commentators [ http://www.postpeakliving.com/peak-oil-primer ] have warned of multiple times.
These food and bottled water shortages, power cuts, fuel-rationing and breakdowns in just-in-time manufacturing have been anticipated by those who take peak oil seriously. It is almost as if eastern Japan is experiencing a peak oil rehearsal, although other regions of Japan are virtually unaffected. If proponents of peak oil [ http://www.guardian.co.uk/global/2011/mar/28/oil-reserves-shell-supply ] are correct, then the rest of the world may experience something similar within the next 5 to 10 years, and hence it is important that we learn valuable lessons from Japan's response to the current circumstances.
What makes the current situation different from peak oil?
Under a peak oil scenario, the entire world (not just one country) would be affected by a continuous decline in global oil production. The rate of that decline is the key factor. If the rate is very gradual (a few percent points each year), then economies and their food and energy production and distribution systems in particular will have more time to adapt.
In such circumstances, we could envisage a significant decline in the flow of goods and people across the globe — a slowing or a potentially grinding halt. For a country like Japan that relies heavily on the import of food, having only 40% self-sufficiency, the real peak oil scenario would have dire impacts.
Under the present situation, Japan can still rely on imports to alleviate food supply problems. This is fortunate as over 600 farms, 125 harbours and 2,333 fishing vessels [ http://www.maff.go.jp/e/quake/press_110325-9.html ] were destroyed by the tsunami, not to mention the thousands of people who made their livelihoods from agriculture and fishing who are either deceased or displaced. Furthermore, the 20-30 km zone around the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant may not be used for food production for some time to come and the good reputations of those areas for providing clean produce may take even longer to be restored.
In a global peak oil scenario, it is highly likely that food prices would increase significantly. To some extent this is happening. For instance, in February 2011 it was reported that food prices reached a record high due to poor harvests, rising oil prices (at US$105 per barrel) and increasing demand for foodstuffs due to rising population and incomes. The conflict in Libya was predicted to further exacerbate the food and oil prices. In fact, conflict and civil unrest in oil producing countries is another facet of various peak oil scenarios as nations scramble for the remaining resources. It is something that Richard Heinberg describes as the "last one standing [ http://usa.mediamonitors.net/content/view/full/9427/ ]" scenario in which powerful countries will use their assets to promote their own survival at the expense of everyone else.
So in the current predicament facing Japan, the situation is ameliorated by the ability of different nations to offer support and continue trading (for instance, Evian is selling a lot of bottled water to Japan at the moment). This certainly would be more difficult under some of the extreme peak oil scenarios, where rapid oil decline is involved.
Lessons from Japan
While the consequences of the current disaster for Japan have been tragic in terms of the loss of life and while it is clear that the emotional, psychological and economic impacts are enormous, there are real signs of hope.
The first important lesson to recognize is the way that Japan's leaders acted rapidly and responsibly. We have already indicated that fuel rationing was in place from 12 March 2011. The reality is that Japan is one of the most disaster-prepared nations in the world and regularly undertakes wide-scale drills. This practice proved to be of vital importance in helping people, communities and institutions cope with the major challenges that they have had to face.
Government officials quickly recognized that people were hoarding food supplies and began to publicly request that they only buy what they need. This was followed up by a series of public service announcements by the Japan Ad Council under theme of "What I can do now."
The Minister in charge of consumer affairs, Renho Murata [ http://www.japantoday.com/category/national/view/renho-calls-on-consumers-not-to-buy-up-hoard-daily-necessities ], frequently called on people not to panic buy and hoard food. She argued that this kind of activity was undermining the ability to provide relief supplies to the quake hit areas. At the same time, the general public and the private sector in the Kanto region were encouraged to comply with the scheduled power outages and to significantly reduce their energy consumption. Everybody responded positively – keen to play their part in solving this problem.
Prime Minister Naoto Kan in particular made an appeal [ http://www.kantei.go.jp/foreign/kan/statement/201103/13message_e.html ] to the people of Japan on 13 March 2011 when he said, "We Japanese have overcome many very trying situations in the past to create our modern society of peace and prosperity. I firmly believe that through our citizens working together to respond to this great earthquake and tsunami, we will certainly be able to overcome this crisis."
This message has been echoed across the media and the Japanese public has responded by showing calmness, patience, respect for each other and mutual support. If anything, they have exemplified Richard Heinberg's power down scenario — the path of cooperation, conservation and sharing. Whether they can hold true to this path over a prolonged period of time remains to be seen.
In the global Transition Movement, they often refer to the "head, heart and hand" approach to coping with peak oil and climate change, as discussed in Rob Hopkin's Transition Handbook [ http://transitionculture.org/shop/the-transition-handbook/ ]. Put simply, the head signifies the exploration needed about how we can re-orient our lives to become more local and small scale as our awareness increases of the energy crisis we are heading into. The heart symbolizes how we can generate positive visions of the future and how they can be harnessed to overcome the feelings of powerlessness in the face of these immense challenges. The hands are a representation about understanding how the transition model can be employed in practice for specific communities.
For many communities in eastern Japan, the current circumstances represent the first time they have had to consider questions about food and energy security. The vast majority appear, quite naturally, to share the overwhelming desire to get back to normal, back to the way things were before. But there are also signs of the head, heart and hand approach as many Japanese commentators are asking questions about how will develop in the future.
If Japan is to build back better, then it should perhaps do so by building more resilient, more locally oriented communities in the areas affected by the quake and tsunami, and beyond. In fact, this is a chance to reconsider completely the development path for Japan towards one that is less vulnerable, less reliant upon fossil fuels, and ideally a low carbon society.
To borrow the words of Prime Minister Kan once again when he called upon his compatriots:
"Through this resolve, let us all now — each and every individual — firmly reinforce our bonds with our families, friends, and communities, overcoming this crisis to once more build an even better Japan."
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2011
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/apr/04/japan-disaster-peak-oil [with comments]
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More than one in 10 nuclear power plants at risk from earthquakes
Armenia's Metsamor plant is susceptible to quakes
Many stations are in countries that would be less able than Japan to cope with disasters
By Jonathan Owen
Sunday, 3 April 2011
Scores of nuclear power plants worldwide are at risk from tsunamis or earthquakes similar to the natural disasters that crippled Japan's Fukushima reactors, according to new research. Many at-risk plants are in countries less able to cope with a disaster than Japan, experts have warned.
Seventy-six operating power stations in Japan, Taiwan, China, South Korea, India, Pakistan and the US are located in areas close to coastlines deemed vulnerable to tsunamis.
Of 442 nuclear power stations globally, more than one in 10are situated in places deemed to be at high or extreme risk of earthquakes – in Japan, the US, Taiwan, Armenia and Slovenia – according to a new study by the analysts Maplecroft.
Helen Hodge, Maplecroft's natural hazards analyst, said: "Although Japanese nuclear facilities are particularly exposed, other countries could also face similar risks. South Korea, Taiwan, southern China, India, Pakistan and the west coast of the US have operating or planned nuclear facilities on tsunami-exposed coastlines, while nuclear sites in areas of high or extreme risk of earthquakes can be found in western US, Taiwan, Armenia, Iran and Slovenia."
Emeritus Professor Keith Barnham, a physicist from Imperial College London, commented: "Japan is one of the most advanced technological counties but one can see the problems they are having in coping with the aftermath. One fears for the reactors planned or operational in the environmentally unsafe areas of less technologically developed countries."
Nuclear safety experts cite the example of an ageing Russian-built nuclear reactor only 30km from the Armenian capital, Yerevan. In December 1988, a powerful earthquake, which led to the deaths of at least 25,000 people, occurred in north-west Armenia. The following year, the Metsamor nuclear plant was shut down due to safety concerns regarding "seismic vulnerability". Although one of its reactors is now being decommissioned, another remains operational. The International Atomic Energy Association (IAEA) has been involved in safety improvements at the plant for more than a decade.
But, according to the World Nuclear Association, "The present Metsamor plant is a concern to the European Union and to neighbouring Turkey, 16km away. There have been various calls to shut it down ... but Armenia is very dependent on it and has said that it will remain open until a replacement is commissioned."
The risks of future natural disasters have been recognised by the IAEA in recent years, which set up the International Seismic Safety Centre in 2008. Its safety guidelines on earthquakes and tsunamis are being revised following the incident at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.
The Japanese crisis has reignited the debate over nuclear safety. As a result, several nations, including Italy, Switzerland and Germany, have put new reactor plans on hold. The nuclear plant at Fukushimi was crippled after an earthquake and tsunami devastated north-east Japan last month.
James Acton, nuclear expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, commented: "The key question is whether we have correctly predicted the risk that a reactor could be hit by a disaster (natural or man-made) that is bigger than it is designed to withstand. This issue should be urgently reviewed by all states with reactors."
Jeremy Gordon, editor of World Nuclear News, predicted there would be a "step change" in efforts to improve safety. "While it's true that many, if not most countries, would be less prepared than Japan to face an unprecedented natural disaster and nuclear accident on this scale," he said, "the country involved in future would likely have a far better practical support network from other governments and practical experts in industry."
Dr Gordon Woo, an IAEA consultant, said there was already a "significant degree" of seismic technology transfer by the IAEA to less advanced nations. He predicted this would increase after the Japanese disaster.
©independent.co.uk
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/more-than-one-in-10-nuclear-power-plants-at-risk-from-earthquakes-2260817.html [with comments]
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Germany's radioactive boars a legacy of Chernobyl
2011-04-04 14:20:00
For a look at just how long radioactivity can hang around, consider Germany's wild boars.
A quarter century after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in the Soviet Union carried a cloud of radiation across Europe, these animals are radioactive enough that people are urged not to eat them. And the mushrooms the pigs dine on aren't fit for consumption either.
Germany's experience shows what could await Japan — if the problems at the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant get any worse.
The German boars roam in forests nearly 950 miles (1,500 kilometers ) from Chernobyl. Yet, the amount of radioactive cesium-137 within their tissue often registers dozens of times beyond the recommended limit for consumption and thousands of times above normal.
"We still feel the consequences of Chernobyl's fallout here," said Christian Kueppers, a radiation expert at Germany's Institute for Applied Ecology in Freiburg.
"The contamination won't go away any time soon — with cesium's half-life being roughly 30 years, the radioactivity will only slightly decrease in the coming years."
Cesium can build up in the body and high levels are thought to be a risk for various other cancers. Still, researchers who studied Chernobyl could not find an increase in cancers that might be linked to cesium.
Cesium also accumulates over time in the soil, which makes boars most susceptible They snuffle through forest soil with their snouts and feed on the kinds of mushroom that tend to store radioactivity, Environment Ministry spokesman Thomas Hagbeck said.
The problem is so common that now all wild boars bagged by hunters in the affected regions have to be checked for radiation. Government compensation to hunters whose quarry has to be destroyed has added up to euro460,000 ($650,000) over the past 12 months, Hagbeck said.
"It's really sad when you have to throw out meat that is normally extraordinarily tasty," said Joachim Reddemann, managing director of Bavaria state's hunting association.
Thousands of wild boars killed in southern Germany every year register unacceptable levels of radiation. It's calculated in becquerels, a measurement of radiation given off. Anything beyond 600 becquerels per kilogram isn't recommended, according to Germany's Federal Office for Radiation Protection.
Normal meat has an average contamination of 0.5 becquerel per kilogram, and a German would normally consume about 100 becquerels per year from plants and dairy products, the agency said.
About 2 percent of the 50,000 boars hunted are above the legal radioactivity limit, Reddemann said. And the government's radiation protection office says some mushrooms have registered up to 20 times the legal cesium limit.
Even farther away in France, there is still soil contamination, though levels have dropped significantly. It is now rare to find unsafe levels of cesium in boars and mushrooms, said radiation expert Philippe Renaud of France's Institute of Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety.
In Austria, too, traces of radioactive cesium remain in the soil. Along with boars and mushrooms, deer have been affected — some testing at five times the legal limit, that country's environment agency says.
Japan's Fukushima plant has so far not leaked nearly as much radiation as Chernobyl, but authorities there have banned the sale of milk, spinach, cabbage and other products from surrounding regions as a precaution.
European officials insist that occasionally eating contaminated boar meat or mushrooms does not pose an immediate health risk. Public health agencies are typically conservative in setting limits for radioactivity in food.
Eating 200 grams of mushrooms tested seven times above the legal cesium limit, for example, would amount to the same exposure as the altitude radiation taken in during a 2,000-mile flight, according to Germany's Office for Radiation Protection.
In Austria, authorities say that eating the unlikely amount of 2 pounds of contaminated boar meat that is 10 times above the legal cesium limit would amount to two-thirds of an adult's normal annual radiation intake by food.
However, the possibility of exposure will not be going away anytime soon.
"We assume that wild game will still be similarly affected until 2025 and then very slowly recede," said Reddemann, of Bavaria's hunting association. "The problem will certainly still be around for the next 100 years, and Chernobyl will still be an issue for our children and grandchildren."
Veronika Oleksyn in Vienna and Camille Rustici in Paris contributed to this report.
© Copyright Sify Technologies Ltd, 2011
http://www.sify.com/news/germany-s-radioactive-boars-a-legacy-of-chernobyl-news-environment+and+nature-leefkpghcdj.html
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