Fukushima Groundwater Shows Record Radiation Levels
In this Saturday, Nov. 12, 2011 file photo, workers in protective suits and masks wait to enter the emergency operation center at the crippled Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power station in Okuma, Japan. (AP Photo/David Guttenfelder, Pool)
By Kentaro Hamada and Antoni Slodkowski Posted: 07/09/2013 7:06 am EDT | Updated: 07/10/2013 8:25 am EDT
TOKYO, July 9 (Reuters) - Japan may restart several reactors shut down by the Fukushima nuclear crisis in about a year, a senior regulator said in an interview on Tuesday, a day after new safety rules went into effect designed to avoid a repeat of the disaster.
At the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant north of Tokyo, the site of the world's worst atomic disaster since Chernobyl in 1986, the situation took a turn for the worse as radiation levels in groundwater soared, suggesting highly toxic materials from the plant are now close to the Pacific Ocean.
But Japan is forging ahead with attempts to restart idled reactors in the face of a sceptical public, after Fukushima highlighted weak oversight of the industry.
That is meant to change with the new rules.
Getting units restarted is a key government goal to reduce the import bill for fossil fuel to run conventional stations. Only two of Japan's 50 reactors are connected to the grid and operators applied to restart 10 on Monday.
"Some units are projected (to restart) one year from now, though I don't know how many," Kenzo Oshima, a commissioner of Japan's Nuclear Regulation Authority, told Reuters. "It is hard to imagine that all the applications would be rejected, though we don't know what the outcome will be at the moment."
He did not identify the reactors that are likely to restart.
SITUATION WORSENS
Tokyo Electric Power Co, the operator of the Fukushima station, hit by the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami, said that an observation well between the damaged reactor No. 2 and the sea showed levels of radioactive caesium-134 were 90 times higher on Monday than they had been the previous Friday.
Tokyo Electric, also known as Tepco, said it detected caesium-134 at 9,000 becquerels per litre, 150 times above Japan's safety standard. A becquerel is a measure of the release of radioactive energy.
The reading for caesium-137, with a half life of 30 years, was some 85 times higher than it had been three days earlier.
The latest findings, 25 metres from the sea, come a month after Tepco detected radioactive caesium in groundwater flowing into its wrecked plant far from the sea on elevated ground. The level of caesium found in June was much lower than the amount announced on Tuesday.
The spike, combined with recent discoveries of high levels of radioactive elements like tritium and strontium, suggest that contaminated water is spreading toward the sea side of the plant from the reactors sitting on higher ground.
"We don't know what is the reason behind the spike," Tepco spokeswoman Mayumi Yoshida told Reuters. "We're still looking to determine the causes behind it."
The operator has been flushing water over the three reactors to keep them cool for more than two years, but contaminated water has been building up at the rate of an an Olympic-size swimming pool per week.
In April, Tepco warned it may run out of space to store the water and asked for approval to channel what it has described groundwater with low levels of radiation around the plant and to the sea through a "bypass". Local fishermen oppose the proposal.
Tepco also announced that the plant's manager at the height of the crisis, when three reactors underwent meltdowns, died on Tuesday of oesophageal cancer - unrelated to his duties.
Masao Yoshida was widely credited with preventing the situation from spiralling out of control when he ignored an order from Tepco executives to stop pouring seawater over the reactors to keep them from overheating further.
He was one of a skeleton group of staff, known as the Fukushima 50, who remained at the plant at the height of the crisis, but he rarely spoke publicly about his experiences.
(Additional reporting by Osamu Tsukimori; Editing by Aaron Sheldrick and Ron Popeski)
Finally, we have direct line of sight. The sort of direct lines in which radiation travels. Shrouded in the steamy, soupy, grey of Japan .. http://www.channel4.com/news/japan ‘s hot, wet season, Fukushima-Daiichi .. http://www.channel4.com/news/fukushima .. lies about 1000 metres along the beach from where we stand, stifled in brilliant white radiation suits like Clockwork Orange droogs, lost in a nuclear wilderness.
The giant cranes, red and white, mantis-like, poised over the stricken reactors. We can see three of them. This vast place is screened by thick pine forest north, west, south; and by the Pacific to the east. Invisible and miles from Futaba, the town where so many of its employees lived. It sits, a vast mangled beast, screened off and silent, its failed sea-walls pathetically low as so many said, so many warned…before it all .. http://www.channel4.com/news/japan-earthquake-tsunami-and-nuclear-crisis .
In the past few days Tepco – the Tokyo Electric Power Company .. http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/index-e.html – has finally admitted that radioactive water is leaking from the site into the beautiful, hauntingly clear pacific waters here which teem with fish.
Researchers on 9 July found levels of Caesium 134 here that were 150 times the legal limit. Levels of Caesium 137 were found to be 200 times the legal limit. These are the highest readings since the disaster and nobody knows why.
In this once delightful town on a lush plain between mountains clothed in forest and the Pacific, our radiation alarms go off regularly in “hot spots”.
In a garage forecourt overgrown with weeds – the now-familiar beeping. The ground here giving out radiation around three times that of a chest x-ray. Dangerous? Not for a short time really. But if you worked here now, or lived here? A rather different scenario.
At the charming, but now pathetic, town station the tracks are all but obscured by weeds. In the booking hall the newspapers are still on the rack from the fateful afternoon at 2.46pm on March 11th 2011 when the quake hit.
A notice at the ticket-office reads: “Apologies – we will be back soon.”
But they will not be back soon. Not the ticket-seller; not the trains; not the hospital, school, old-people’s home, school – not the town itself. The latest statistics twist the knife of fate into a small, mortally wounded, sleepy little town. After massive a earthquake, tsunami, series of nuclear explosions, consider what follows.
The bad news is that 96 per cent of Futaba will not be habitable for at least the next five years and probably far longer. The good news is that 4 per centof the town is now considered habitable in two years time. But the bad news is all the houses in that 4 per cent area have been obliterated by the tsunami.
Nowadays vermin have the run of the place – mammals presumably suffering radiation illnesses to varying degrees. The quake-smashed houses, full of faeces left by mice, birds, feral dogs and cats.
These days, as you enter the Exclusion Zone to be given anti-contamination suits, masks and dosimeters for measuring you accumulation of radiation, they offer you something else – rat poison.
Over the main street you still see Futaba’s civic banner, an archway of hope at the gates of this once-prosperous town: “Nuclear Power – Our Bright Future.”
Beneath, the streets are silent, closed off by the police to stop looting. The only sound is the crows’ barking call, echoing over this dead town.
And the bright nuclear future is for a town where rats, not people, now live.
As we ponder this sign the radio we’ve been given cackles at us: “Please, this is the Tepco Power Company informing you it is time to return.”
Our five hours deemed safe for exposure in the town of the rats, is over. We must leave for the Japan beyond, where you can safely expose your skin to the world.
Market Data 
Markets 
AI
