Reporting of the "300 Tonnes of Contaminated Water Leaking Every Day from #Fukushima I Nuke Plant" Assumption by METI Official

(UPDATE) Here comes IAEA, pledging support to Japanese government in dealing with contaminated water leak at Fukushima I Nuke Plant. Jiji Tsushin in English reports "IAEA Ready to Help TEPCO over Tainted Water Leak". ("Tainted"??)

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The press decided to simply quote the government official, despite their misgivings.

There's a word for that in Japanese: げたを預ける (to leave a matter completely in someone else's hand)

It is rather apparent if you watch the video of the press conference on August 7, 2013 that reporters from Japanese press and foreign press either did not understand what Mr. Tatsuya Shinkawa, official in charge of dealing with the Fukushima I Nuke Plant accident at the Agency of Natural Resources and Energy at METI, said about the "300 tonnes leak", or had varying degrees of doubt as to the veracity of the numbers.

Particularly when Mr. Shinkawa, to answer the persistent questions from the reporters throughout the press conference from Asahi, Yomiuri, Mainichi, NHK, Wall Street Journal, AP and others, had to repeatedly cite TEPCO's numbers which had nothing to do with the actual or potential leak:

TEPCO told us they will start drawing 100 tonnes of water each day from three wells.

On hearing that from TEPCO, the conclusion at his place of work, the most elite ministry of the Japanese government with Japan's best and brightest, was that this water must be leaking right now, because the wells were yet to be operational.

Judging by the questions and how the reporters asked them, it is clear that they didn't buy Shinkawa's "assumption" or hypothesis (仮定), the word Shinkawa repeatedly used.

But what happened when the reporters wrote up their articles for their respective papers?

With the exception of Tokyo Shinbun reporter, they made no reference to how Mr. Tatsukawa came up with the number ("assumption" from TEPCO's numbers which were not about the amount of leak), and treated Tatsukawa's remark at face value, as a given fact that officially came from the national government.

If it is wrong, it's Tatsukawa's and the government's problem, not the reporters. What can go wrong by citing the government official? And in the process of quoting the government official, so what the groundwater morphed into either "highly contaminated water" or "nuclear waste water"? What minor difference!

The amount of groundwater flowing into the ocean is unknown. It could be 300 tonnes, it could be more. It could be less. The degree of contamination is known, to the extent of the actual monitoring of the seawater right outside the water intakes at the embankment; the data shows radioactive cesium in slightly over 100 Bq per liter at the maximum, no radioactive iodine.

The highest measurement of radioactive cesium is in front of the Reactor 3 water intake. At other locations, the density of cesium is between 10 and 50 percent of the legally allowable density in discharge water from a nuclear power plant. Tritium and all-beta are not regularly monitored. (Here's the latest seawater monitoring data, released by TEPCO on August 10, 2013.)

The video archive of the August 7, 2013 press conference at IWJ: http://iwj.co.jp/wj/open/archives/95298

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"300 Tonnes of Contaminated Water" Leaking from #Fukushima I Nuke Plant: "It's Just an Assumption", Says Energy Agency Official

"300 tonnes of highly contaminated water is leaking everyday from Fukushima I Nuke Plant! The government official in charge of the nuclear accident in the Ministry of Economy admitted!"

This bad news is all over the world, for a change. Even a financial analyst is talking about it (the groundwater has morphed into highly contaminated nuclear waste water in his article).

Is it? Did he?

Reporter: So, uh... you say 300 tonnes of contaminated water per day is leaking into the ocean. What is the basis for your estimate? How did you calculate? Any monitoring data or anything?

Tatsuya Shinkawa, in charge of dealing with the Fukushima nuclear accident at the Agency of Natural Resources and Energy, under the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry: Uh... The amount of water that will be drawn is going to be 100 tonnes for each well, as we learned from TEPCO at our hearing.

Reporter: Amount of water to be drawn? So, what you're saying is a mere assumption?

Shinkawa: Yes it is, in that sense.

Reporter: I don't quite understand your logic that the entire 100 tonnes of water [per well] is contaminated.

Shinkawa: Naturally, the groundwater flows from the mountainside. If the amount of water to be drawn is 100 tonnes, we supposed those 100 tonnes must have been leaking.

Reporter: How do you know all the water is contaminated?

Shinkawa: At least the water that comes to this particular area may be contaminated, we think.

Watching the video of the August 7, 2013 press conference by the Nuclear Disaster Response Headquarters of the Japanese national government where it all started (at Yasumi Iwakami's IWJ archive), I just have to laugh so hard that my sides start to hurt. The above dialog is from about 55 minutes into the 2-hour video.

Probably more than 80% of the press conference was about "300 tonnes of contaminated water". Toward the end, both Mr. Shinkawa and the reporters were too tired to realize they were just repeating themselves over and over again.

Probably due to fatigue, Reuters' reporters wrote in their article (8/7/2013):

"Shinkawa described the water as "highly" contaminated."

I watched the entire press conference, and didn't hear him say that.

Probably due to fatigue also, almost all Japanese newspapers and news agencies simply wrote what Shinkawa said as truism, except for Tokyo Shinbun whose reporter doubted the wisdom of basing the countermeasures on such a flimsy assumption.

Here's one-page document that Mr. Shinkawa distributed to the press:

Oh well. The horse is out of the barn. The powerful Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry has spread baseless rumors around the world.

I'm starting to believe it is deliberate. The Agency of Natural Resources and Energy wants TEPCO to be able to dump uncontaminated groundwater drawn upstream into the ocean, but the talk with the fisheries associations in Fukushima has stalled after the detection of radioactive materials from the observation holes in the embankment in June.

Here's the bargain the Agency could use with the fishermen: Do you want the leak of "300 tonnes of contaminated groundwater" to continue? Or would you rather have us release uncontaminated groundwater drawn upstream, and keep the contaminated groundwater in tanks?

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