Monday, September 9, 2013

"National Government at the Forefront" on Contaminated Water Problems at #Fukushima I Nuke Plant Means Committees, Teams, Groups


that would make Sir Humphrey Appleby proud.

Now that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe declared to IOC Commissioners who gave him the 2020 Summer Olympic in Tokyo that his government would be at the forefront in dealing with contaminated water problems, and that "the effect of contamination" (carefully note the word "effect") was confined within the plant harbor (to the great puzzlement of TEPCO who said they hadn't advised Mr. Abe on anything), the government is in full gear - creating committees.

Let's see. How many committees, teams, working groups are there on the Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant accident?

On contaminated water problems:

  • Working Group set up by Nuclear Regulatory Authority, headed by Commissioner Fuketa

  • Team set up by Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, headed by Minister Motegi himself

  • Group set up by the national government that include Fukushima Prefecture officials, headed by Vice Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry

  • Committee of 10 government ministers to discuss the problems (useless of them all...)


TEPCO has to send people to each group meeting, and it has set up its own group on contaminated water as demanded by the national government.

On decommissioning:

  • Government committee to promote decommissioning based on the "roadmap"

  • Government committee on R&D for decommissioning technologies

  • Private industry association set up at the prompting by Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry to develop decommissioning technologies


Other than the working group set up by NRA which actually is very useful in analyzing the situation and suggesting courses of action, the rest look like good venues for government officials, bureaucrats and university professors to earn extra per diem, and waste of resource for TEPCO who will have to send mid to high-ranking managers and prepare presentations to placate the officials and bureaucrats.

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

So they are going to talk the coriums back into the containment and the spent fuel bars out of the pools into safer storage.
Also the contaminated water will become miraculous clean by just talking about it.

We can expect a lot lies until 2020...

Anonymous said...

Sequester them all under armed guard inside Fukushima Daichi complex and DO NOT LET THEM OUT until they have this magical solution.

The fact that a solution may be i achievable in the short to mid term is neither here nor there. Locking them up will make a lot of people feel a lot better, and it's cheaper than sending them to Den Haag for trial.

On another note who cashes the cheques that Shinzo Abe writes with his mouth? Is he prepared to personally back his statement in Rio last week that no harm has been down or will befall Tokyo as a result of Fukushima Daichi?

I do hope that when (not if) Tokyo 2020 goes pear shaped, that he will be held personally financially accountable.

Anonymous said...

@Laprimavera: seriously, did you expect the government to actually commit useful resources (workers/soldiers, machines, labs, etc.)?
Apart from the current (in the long term not so important) crisis, the mid-term work is pretty straightforward:
- Fixing ALPS
- Solidifying the resulting waste, for example in concrete
(WIth some tritium in the concrete, the rest in the sea)
But… oops - I'm getting too rational!

Anonymous said...

It will not take until 2020 for radiation to cause major health and environmental issues. Japan will face riots when parents see their children dying from cancers--its just a matter of time if all the data on radiation contamination is correct from TEPCOs (yes, TEPCOs bumbling data 'confessions'). Its a lot worse than TEPCO reports, but even that is terrible.

What is worse, in March 20 2011, a narrative from the US Navy report was provided stating 1500 millisievert/hr dose detected at 36.11 46N and 120.16 87E. This is close to Buson Korea..yes, its SOUTH of Tokyo but east. Now they could have made an error.but check out the coordinates on any map..scary if they were the actual location. One other item is which lat/long naming system they used--which could change the location..but 36N and 120 E is pretty far away from Fukushima! See:
http://www.infiniteunknown.net/2012/02/27/u-s-navy-vice-admiral-alan-thompson-reported-1500-microsieverts-per-hour-thyroid-dose-south-of-tokyo-on-march-20-2011/

arevamirpal::laprimavera said...

Me? I thought I have made abundantly clear throughout this blogging that I am utterly puzzled by the Japanese people's trust in their government to do something remotely useful.

Anonymous said...

It is officially a coverup now. TMI resulted in data collection to acquire it then suppress it. If TMI vented, it was minimal. If people got sick from releases, it was minimal. Any eyewitness accounts are sealed and under non-disclosure clauses. If there was a hydrogen explosion inside the reactor building there, it was only a loud noise.

Now with committee work, numbers will be harder to come by in the future as a dumbing down of all information from Daiichi will be the priority.

IOC is the worst offender in this Olympic scenario but they take their marching orders from higher up.

Anonymous said...

I don't really get the impression that the Japanese trust their government. I've seen Japanese people complaining, "what the hell is the government thinking!"

I just think they don't know what to do about their shitty government, and end up sitting on their hands, doing nothing. But isn't it like that for all of us everywhere?

If we ever try to do anything that any government doesn't like, they can make life hell for us, lock us up with some bullshit reason and publically portray us with slander, or even "suicide" us if they really wanted to.

It's what the government is there for - to maintain citizens as blissfully ignorant workers, whilst they take advantage of political privileges to milk everyone for personal profit.

Anyway, Abe is a delusional fuckstick. I will laugh so hard if the Fukushima farce finally gives way admist live global Olympic media coverage.

Anonymous said...

Tokyo is upset by twoo cartons in the French satirical and whistle blower weekly "Le Canard Enchaîné" folowing the Olympic amazing choice.
You can see the cartoons here http://www.leparisien.fr/international/jo-2020-deux-dessins-du-canard-enchaine-irritent-tokyo-12-09-2013-3130219.php

Mutant sumotoris, first, and for swimming, the olympic pool is already build.

Not very good cartoons IMO, but Tokyo takes them seriously.

Anonymous said...

Folowing...
It is said in the article that the first pic illustrates an article about water problem at F. daichi, and the second a litterary review of American writer Thomas B. Reverdy's last book, in post-Fukushima Japan.
It also mentions an article in the Mainichi about those cartoons, but I didn't find it.

Anonymous said...

Daiichi.
So, OK, Japan is terribly suffering with these two images. The weekly should apologize !
No-one else is to apologize for anything happening in Tohoku, as there is no contaminating of Asia-Pacific, just a few sqare kilometers are a bit rotten in Japan, nothing really. All is safe, cold shut-down, pools are safe, go away but comme back in 2020 or before as we need your money. It costs a lot to seduce the IOC, you know.

Anonymous said...

The cartoons are very funny in the macabre gallows humour style. If Tokyo administration is upset then fvck-em all.

Let them squeal like stuck pigs, the louder the better. The more they complain, the more the disaster will be discussed.

Feed them a diet of 1000bq/kg sushi and 250bq/kg fuku rice with some tritium water to wash it all down. Fvck these pr1cks for their murderous greed

Anonymous said...

In terms of placing a useless burden on people doing the work, this is to be compared with former prime minister Kan visiting Fuku 1 for a few hours because (reportedly) he wanted to see with his own eyes through the lies that NISA head Madarame was pushing to him ("no danger of explosion", for example).

Anyways, government stepping in should mean replacing Tepco top management, rather than creating committees of politicians. Alas, it seems that Abe does not want to upset LDP buddies at Tepco and prefers to waste money on trips abroad for politicians to visit nuclear installations all over the world, rather than placing at Tepco helm someone wiiling to spend money on fixing Fukushima rather than restarting Kashiwazaki-Kariwa.

Beppe

Post a Comment