Friday Fukushima updates

[robdogbucky]

TEPCO says contaminated water may overflow

Tokyo Electric Power Company says that, in a worst case scenario, highly radioactive water may overflow from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant as early as June 20th.

The company is set to start operating filters for highly radioactive water from June 15th. However, it warns that if the filtering does not go to plan, highly radioactive water may overflow from a tunnel at the Number 2 reactor.

TEPCO says that by May 31st, 105,100 tons of waste water had accumulated. It contains an estimated 720,000 terabecquerels of radioactive substances. Tera stands for one trillion...

...TEPCO officials say that in the event the filters don't work properly, the utility will complete an additional underground tank for highly contaminated water by mid-August. The basements of the reactor buildings and turbine buildings are full of highly radioactive water. The amount is increasing by 500 tons a day due to ongoing injections of fresh water to cool the damaged reactors and fuel rods.

Friday, June 03, 2011 20:15 +0900 (JST)

http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/03_31.html





TEPCO plans to seal off water inlets at damaged nuclear plant by end of June

Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) has submitted plans to the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency to finish blocking water inlets near intakes at its damaged Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant by the end of the month, company officials said on June 2.

By June 2, TEPCO had filled in 28 of the 45 tunnel entrances and pits near intakes of the plant's No. 1 to 4 reactors. It plans to seal off the remaining 17 by the end of the month. The pits and tunnel entrances are connected to the reactors' turbine buildings, and it is possible they have contributed to the flow of contaminated water.

So far 4.7 petabecquerels of radiation have been detected near the intake of the plant's No. 2 reactor, while 20 terabecquerels have been recorded near the No. 3 reactor -- far exceeding the limit allowed to be released into the sea. Responding to the massive leaks of radiation, the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency asked TEPCO to submit a report by June 1 to rectify the situation.

On the evening of June 2, TEPCO announced that the temperature in the pool for spent fuel at the plant's No. 2 reactor had fallen to 40 degrees Celsius over a two-day period after it started a circulatory cooling system. In the near future, the company will examine if the humidity in the reactor building has decreased. Although the No. 2 reactor building was not greatly damaged, water that has evaporated from the pool for spent fuel has evaporated and filled the building with steam, increasing the humidity level to 99.9 percent. This has made it difficult for humans to enter and for robots to examine the building...

http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20110603p2a00m0na019000c.html






Diet infighting angers disaster victims

2011/06/03

Bickering among politicians over who should lead Japan as it tries to rebuild following the Great East Japan Earthquake is provoking fury and confusion among people hit by the disaster.

As maneuvering continued against the Diet ahead of a no-confidence motion in the Cabinet of Prime Minister Naoto Kan on June 2, residents and local government officials in quake-hit areas of Miyagi, Iwate and Fukushima prefectures said their problems were being forgotten by representatives more interested in partisan advantage.

Shinichiro Matsukawa, 71, evacuated to an elementary school in Ishinomaki, Miyagi Prefecture, after his two-story wooden home was swept away by the March 11 tsunami.

"All the evacuees here are wondering what they are doing in the Diet at this time. If they have that much time on their hands, they should be spending it on doing everything possible to deal with the disaster," he said...

http://www.asahi.com/english/TKY201106020179.html




Friday, June 3, 2011

March 9 foreshock should've led to Big One alert: expert

Kyodo

Authorities could have issued a warning over the March 11 earthquake had they treated an earlier quake as a foreshock and closely analyzed the aftershocks that followed, according to a Tohoku University associate professor.

The foreshock, which occurred at 11:45 a.m. on March 9 near the focus of the March 11 quake, some 50 hours before it struck, registered a magnitude of 7.3, rocking Miyagi Prefecture and sending a tsunami of up to 60 cm to Iwate Prefecture.

The Meteorological Agency said this quake might have been a foreshock of the March 11 magnitude 9 quake, whose tsunami ravaged northeastern Japan's Pacific coast, including Miyagi and Iwate.

Tomoki Hayashino at the university's Research Center for Neutrino Science analyzed 43 earthquakes with a magnitude of 7.0 or above that occurred around Japan over the past 80 years and checked the number of aftershocks occurring within 20 hours of each...

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20110603a5.html



Friday, June 3, 2011

School radiation cleanup slammed
Parents flunk ministry over soil-removal policy shift

Kyodo

Despite the education ministry's recent move to set a new nonbinding target to reduce the radiation children in Fukushima Prefecture are exposed to at schools, experts, local educators and parents don't feel reassured.

On May 27, the Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Ministry said it will strive to limit the radiation exposure of students to 1 millisievert or less a year while they are at school.

The move came after a barrage of criticism from parents in the prefecture who fear radiation leaking from the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant could increase their kids' chances of developing leukemia or cancer. Some, supported by activists, lodged a protest outside the ministry on May 23.

But the new limit is only a "best effort" target, and an earlier — and binding — radiation limit is still intact. In April, the ministry set a limit of 3.8 microsieverts per hour for playground use at schools in the prefecture. Together with estimated exposure from outside of school grounds, total annual exposure could grow to 20 millisieverts...

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20110603f2.html