From Greenpeace by Kendra Ulrich
Yesterday, March 11th 2015, is a somber anniversary for the people of
Japan: four years since the Great East Japan Earthquake struck, sparking
a tsunami, claiming tens of thousands of lives, and beginning the worst
nuclear disaster in a generation: the triple reactor core meltdowns and
destroyed containment buildings at TEPCO's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear
power plant.
And, four years later, the nuclear crisis continues to unfold: both
the environmental contamination and the ongoing human suffering caused
by the disaster.
A team of IAEA experts check out water storage tanks TEPCO's
Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station on 27 November 2013. The expert
team is assessing Japanese efforts to decommission the stricken nuclear
power plant. Photo Credit: Greg Webb / IAEA
Even Japan's Prime Minister Abe – an unabashed nuclear supporter who
has been pushing for the restart of Japan's nuclear fleet – has taken a
step back from his position of 2013 that the radioactive water crisis
was "under control."
In January 2015, he admitted that, "There [are] a mountain of issues,
including contaminated water, decommissioning, compensation and
contamination...
When I think of the victims still living in difficult
evacuation conditions, I don't think we can use the word 'settled', to
describe the Fukushima plant".
One of the plagues of the Fukushima site has been – and continues to
be – a crisis of that most fundamental of elements, the very foundation
for life on this planet: water.
Water, contaminated with some of the most dangerous and long-lived
man-made toxins ever created: radioactive elements like cesium, bone and
brain-seeking, carcinogenic strontium-90, and 61 other radionuclides.
As recently as 25 February, TEPCO admitted that highly radioactive
water – 50 to 70 times more radioactive than the already high
radioactivity levels previously seen onsite – had been leaking into the
ocean for nearly a year. TEPCO chose not to disclose the leak until now.
The fishermen's union declared this latest news a complete breach of
trust between the utility and the local fisherman.
And this, at a time when TEPCO has been seeking approval from the
local fishermen's union to start dumping some 297,000 tons of "treated,"
radioactive tritium-contaminated water into the ocean.
Just how big is TEPCO’s radioactive water problem?
Arakawa River in Sekikawa. A Greenpeace monitoring team found
radiation levels high enough to require evacuation in several locations
to the northwest of the crisis-stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant,
including Iitate village, 40km from the plant and 20km beyond the
official evacuation zone. 03/27/2011 © Christian Åslund / Greenpeace
Well, let's get down to
the numbers:
- 320,000 tons – the amount of highly contaminated water as of
December 2014 waiting in about 1000 massive tanks onsite for "treatment"
to remove the 62 radioactive elements contaminating it – except for the
radioactive hydrogen isotope, tritium.
- 300 tons – water per day sprayed into the reactor vessels to cool
the molten reactor cores in Units 1-3: cores that no one actually knows
the exact location of.
- 800 tons – the amount of groundwater migrating onsite every day. Of which, 300-400 tons becomes radioactively contaminated.
- 400 tons – the amount of highly radioactive water flowing into the
Pacific Ocean every day – a figure that does not include this latest
leak announced in February.
- 11,000 tons – the estimated amount of highly contaminated water
sitting in trenches – which TEPCO has attempted to pump up for treatment
with limited success.
The crux of this is that, not only does the contamination continue to
flow from the reactor site and into the environment, but the locating
of the reactor cores and decommissioning of the site are themselves
contingent upon controlling this onsite watery onslaught.
In an attempt to get a grip on the natural hydrology of the site,
TEPCO has focused on two major projects: building a sea wall to control
the massive radioactive leaks into the ocean and building an ice wall to
reduce the amount of water flowing onsite every day.
The efficacy of both projects raise significant doubts.
Both projects
are based on the assumption that 30 meters below the surface, the soil
layers become impermeable rock, which would serve as a sort of natural
floor, preventing water from moving beneath the walls.
Unfortunately,
independent geological surveys
show that reactor site is built on the soil equivalent of a sponge –
highly permeable sand and pumice stone – to a depth of 200 meters.
Offsite, the situation in surrounding communities is tragically surreal.
Bags of Contaminated Soil in Fukushima. Piles of bags containing
contaminated soil, mud and grass at a site in Iitate village, three and a
half years after the nuclear accident. 10/27/2014 © Noriko Hayashi /
Greenpeace
Decontamination efforts are generating a massive amount of
radioactive waste.
This waste is packed into huge cubic meter black bags
and moved to temporary sites. 54,000 thousand such open-air, temporary,
rad waste storage sites lie scattered throughout the surrounding areas,
including in the backyards of homes, parking lots, and parks. (
Reference)
Official estimates of the storage volume required to house this
mountain of radwaste are between 15 and 28 million cubic meters of
waste, enough to fill 12 to 23 Tokyo Domes.
In short, the decontamination efforts are not getting "rid" of the
radioactive problem – they are simply moving it, and sometimes not very
far.
In places like the heavily contaminated city of Iitate, thousands of
decontamination workers swarm over the site – many bent over a bit of
curb or sidewalk scrubbing with a toothbrush – a poignant reminder of
both the enormity of the problem and the deep losses for the community
members who once lived here.
Now, four years on, these are still nuclear
ghost towns.
And in spite of such valiant efforts on the part of the
decontamination workers, the sheer magnitude of the problem seems to
prevent real success.
Greenpeace radiation experts have visited Fukushima 23 times – the
first in the weeks immediately following the start of the disaster. In
October 2014, Greenpeace monitoring results from Iitate (40km from
Fukushima Daiichi), Fukushima city (60km), Miyakoji of Tamura city
(20km) and Kawauchi village (20km) showed that efforts at
decontamination were still failing to reduce contamination in many areas
to meet the Japanese government’s long-term decontamination target
level of 0.23micro Sv/h.
In Kawauchi, part of which had its
evacuation order lifted in October 2014,
Greenpeace monitoring found 59% of our radiation measurements were over the target level and, again, with higher levels found away from the roads.
But people cannot be expected to live full, meaningful lives in their
former communities by being confined to clean "corridors" along the
roads and walkways.
This was once a heavily agricultural region. The
loss of the land means the loss of an entire way of life and many former
residents' entire livelihoods.
Approximately 120,000 nuclear refugees are still living in temporary
housing, their lives left in limbo: not enough compensation to establish
a life somewhere else, and either not able to, or choosing not to
return to their former homes.
"Why would people come back here permanently to live?"
asks Masami Yoshizawa, a farmer who refused to leave his cattle herd in Namie.
"There is no infrastructure any more; no schools, shops or transport."
And that is a question no one should ever have to ask – particularly not when the disaster is man-made.
On this day, as we do every day, we remember the victims – many of
whom are still suffering from this nuclear disaster.
And we will
continue to fight, with the majority of the people of Japan who oppose
any nuclear restart, to ensure that the future is one which is safe,
clean, and nuclear-free.
Add your name to the petition today, to show the Japanese
policy-makers and their industry allies, that we believe a #ZeroNuclear
future is possible, for Japan and the world.
www.greenpeace.org/zeronuclear2015
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