NY Times on Japan's Slow and Flawed Decontamination: "Japan Seems to Want to Do It By Themselves", Says US Expert, "Japan's Soil Is Different", Says Japanese Official

That official is none other than Mr. Hidehiko Nishiyama, Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency spokesman in much of the early days of the Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant accident, and was removed from the post after he was caught fooling around with a young female subordinate of his in the Ministry.

In the New York Times article by the Tokyo-based reporter Hiroko Tabuchi, Mr. Nishiyama says, of collaboration with foreign companies in decontaminating Fukushima Prefecture,

“Even if a method works overseas, the soil in Japan is different, for example,” said Hidehiko Nishiyama, deputy director at the environment ministry, who is in charge of the Fukushima cleanup. “And if we have foreigners roaming around Fukushima, they might scare the old grandmas and granddads there.”

Yes, I remember the Japanese snow was also different, thus ski wax made in France should not be allowed to be sold.

From New York Times (1/7/2013; part, emphasis is mine):

In Japan, a Painfully Slow Sweep

By HIROKO TABUCHI

(Photo by Ko Sasaki for NYT)

NARAHA, Japan — The decontamination crews at a deserted elementary school here are at the forefront of what Japan says is the most ambitious radiological cleanup the world has seen, one that promised to draw on cutting-edge technology from across the globe.

But much of the work at the Naraha-Minami Elementary School, about 12 miles away from the ravaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, tells another story. For eight hours a day, construction workers blast buildings with water, cut grass and shovel dirt and foliage into big black plastic bags — which, with nowhere to go, dot Naraha’s landscape like funeral mounds.

More than a year and a half since the nuclear crisis, much of Japan’s post-Fukushima cleanup remains primitive, slapdash and bereft of the cleanup methods lauded by government scientists as effective in removing harmful radioactive cesium from the environment.

Local businesses that responded to a government call to research and develop decontamination methods have found themselves largely left out. American and other foreign companies with proven expertise in environmental remediation, invited to Japan in June to show off their technologies, have similarly found little scope to participate.

Recent reports in the local media of cleanup crews dumping contaminated soil and leaves into rivers has focused attention on the sloppiness of the cleanup.

“What’s happening on the ground is a disgrace,” said Masafumi Shiga, president of Shiga Toso, a refurbishing company based in Iwaki, Fukushima. The company developed a more effective and safer way to remove cesium from concrete without using water, which could repollute the environment. “We’ve been ready to help for ages, but they say they’ve got their own way of cleaning up,” he said.

Shiga Toso’s technology was tested and identified by government scientists as “fit to deploy immediately,” but it has been used only at two small locations, including a concrete drain at the Naraha-Minami school.

Instead, both the central and local governments have handed over much of the 1 trillion yen decontamination effort to Japan’s largest construction companies. The politically connected companies have little radiological cleanup expertise and critics say they have cut corners to employ primitive — even potentially hazardous — techniques.

... Also worrying, industry experts say, are cleanup methods used by the construction companies that create loose contamination that can become airborne or enter the water.

At many sites, contaminated runoff from cleanup projects is not fully recovered and is being released into the environment, multiple people involved in the decontamination work said.

In addition, there are no concrete plans about storing the vast amounts of contaminated soil and foliage the cleanup is generating, which the environment ministry estimates will amount to at least 29 million cubic meters, or more than a billion cubic feet.

The contaminated dirt lies in bags on roadsides, in abandoned fields and on the coastline, where experts say they are at risk from high waves or another tsunami.

“This isn’t decontamination — it’s sweeping up dirt and leaves and absolutely irresponsible,” said Tomoya Yamauchi, an expert in radiation measurement at Kobe University who has been helping Fukushima communities test the effectiveness of various decontamination methods. “Japan has started up its big public works machine, and the cleanup has become an end in itself. It’s a way for the government to appear to be doing something for Fukushima.”

... The Japanese government also made an initial effort to contact foreign companies for decontamination support. It invited 32 companies from the United States that specialize in remediation technologies like strip-painting and waste minimization, to show off their expertise to Japanese government officials, experts and companies involved in the cleanup.

Opinions on the trip’s effectiveness vary among participants, but in the six months since, not a single foreign company has been employed in Japan’s cleanup, according to the trip’s participants and Japan’s Environment Ministry.

“Japan has a rich history in nuclear energy, but as you know, the U.S. has a much more diverse experience in dealing with the cleanup of very complicated nuclear processing facilities. We’ve been cleaning it up since World War II,” said Casey Bunker, a director at RJ Lee, a scientific consulting company based in Pennsylvania that took part in the visit.

“There was a little of, ‘Hey, bring your tools over and show us how it works.’ But they ultimately wanted to do it themselves, to fix things themselves,” Mr. Bunker said. “There didn’t seem to be a lot of interest in a consultative relationship moving forward.”

Japanese officials said adapting overseas technologies presented a particular challenge.

“Even if a method works overseas, the soil in Japan is different, for example,” said Hidehiko Nishiyama, deputy director at the environment ministry, who is in charge of the Fukushima cleanup. “And if we have foreigners roaming around Fukushima, they might scare the old grandmas and granddads there.”

Some local residents are losing faith in the decontamination effort.

“I thought Japan was a technologically advanced country. I thought we’d be able to clean up better than this,” said Yoshiko Suganami, a legal worker who was forced to abandon her home and office over two miles from the Fukushima Daiichi plant. “It’s clear the decontamination drive isn’t really about us any more.”

(Full article at the link)

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NY Times: Japan’s Premier Seeks Support for Using Nuclear Power

New York Times writes about it politely, as if Noda's (supposedly) direct plea with the Japanese meant anything ("a testament to the deep public distrust gripping the nation"). The readers of this blog knows it was just a ceremony, and it was not even addressed to the Japanese people whose way of life he said he was going to protect by restarting a nuclear power plant that sits on top of an active fault. The press conference was held to please the governor of Fukui Prefecture and the mayor of Ooi-cho where the plant is located, and his speech was addressed to them. Probably New York Times knows, too. But it has to play the game, as the newspaper of record.

From New York Times, by Martin Fackler (6/8/2012):

TOKYO — In a rare personal appeal on national television, Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda asked for his nation’s support on Friday in restarting the first of Japan’s idled nuclear plants, saying that keeping the plants offline could cause blackouts and economic chaos at a time when the country’s struggling economy can least afford it.

That Mr. Noda took his case to the public on such an crucial issue, rather than setting policy behind closed doors, is a testament to the deep public distrust gripping the nation since last year’s nuclear disaster and the government’s playing down of the risks it posed. Despite increasingly dire warnings about the economic effects of a sudden turn from nuclear energy, a majority of Japanese remain unconvinced that it is safe to turn the plants back on.

In the 10-minute speech, Mr. Noda spoke in stark terms, saying he had concluded that Japan could not maintain its current living standards without nuclear power, at least in the short term. Responding to the commonly heard argument that Japan is getting along fine without the plants, he said that conservation measures would not be enough in the steamy summer months to overcome the loss of the nation’s nuclear plants, which before last year’s accident supplied almost a third of Japan’s electricity.

He also cited national security, saying Japan needed nuclear power to avoid relying too heavily on oil and natural gas from the politically volatile Middle East. “Cheap and reliable electricity are essential for supporting prosperous and decent livelihoods,” Mr. Noda said. “Japanese society cannot function if we stop or try to do without nuclear power generation.”

The need to import more oil and gas to make up for the shortfall has been cited as a major factor behind Japan posting its first yearly trade deficit in more than three decades.

Mr. Noda promised better oversight, saying he hoped to restart the first plant in the western town of Ohi quickly, but that he would not restart others until their safety measures had been thoroughly reviewed. His administration has already deemed the Ohi plant safe and considers it a test case for whether the public will tolerate at least some of the 50 idled commercial reactors being brought back into operation.

The restart issue has polarized Japan for months now, as the country’s still-functioning reactors went offline, one by one, for regular maintenance. In the uproar that followed the triple meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, the government had said it would not restart the reactors without local approval, but officials did not anticipate the depth of public skepticism about the government’s ability to oversee the politically powerful nuclear industry.

That skepticism was given a powerful voice in recent months, as the upstart mayor of Japan’s third-largest city, Osaka, became the country’s most popular politician seemingly overnight by demanding more transparency on the nuclear issue and more caution in restarting plants.

Still, many Japanese share Mr. Noda’s worry that power shortages could cost jobs and accelerate the nation’s industrial decline, driving more businesses abroad.

For weeks, his government has been trying to persuade local leaders to allow a restart of the Ohi plant, which provides power to the heavily urbanized Kansai region, including the cities of Osaka and Kyoto. He has said he wants to restart that plant first because Kansai faces the most severe potential electricity shortages in Japan during the summer, when air-conditioner use surges. The area is also the home to Japan’s struggling electronics industry.

The threat of rolling blackouts seems to have persuaded most local leaders to accept at least a temporary restart of the Ohi plant. The Fukui prefectural government, which has been very supportive of nuclear power in the past, is expected to make a decision as early as next week to approve the restart.

(Full article at the link)

New York Times puts the demonstrators outside the Prime Minister's Official Residence on June 8 at 1,000. Japanese MSM put at 4,000. Some undercounting.

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NY Times: "Spent Nuclear Fuel Drives Growing Fear Over Plant in Japan"

As you see, Goshi Hosono climbing up the narrow stairs to the operation floor of the Reactor 4 building at Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant or TEPCO releasing data on the Reactor 4 building not tilting didn't impress anyone at all. (No surprise there.)

Here's an article on New York Times, written by its Japan-based reporter Hiroko Tabuchi and published on May 26, 2012, highlighting that the "public’s fears about the pool have grown in recent months as some scientists have warned that it has the most potential for setting off a new catastrophe".

The article quotes only Hiroaki Koide of Kyoto University as one of the scientists who have been raising concerns about Reactor 4 in recent months. It mentions the fear that has been circulating for several months about a catastrophe if the Spent Fuel Pool of Reactor 4 collapses, although for some reason the current version of the article linked below dropped the mention of "amplified over the Web" from the opening sentence of the 10th paragraph from the top, after "The fears over the pool at Reactor No. 4". The version that I read had the phrase. Minor details. (Part of the article that still contains that phrase can be seen at ENENEWS.)

From New York Times (5/26/2012):

Spent Nuclear Fuel Drives Growing Fear Over Plant in Japan

By HIROKO TABUCHI and MATTHEW WALD
Published: May 26, 2012

TOKYO — What passes for normal at the Fukushima Daiichi plant today would have caused shudders among even the most sanguine of experts before an earthquake and tsunami set off the world’s second most serious nuclear crisis after Chernobyl.

Fourteen months after the accident, a pool brimming with used fuel rods and filled with vast quantities of radioactive cesium still sits on the top floor of a heavily damaged reactor building, covered only with plastic.

The public’s fears about the pool have grown in recent months as some scientists have warned that it has the most potential for setting off a new catastrophe, now that the three nuclear reactors that suffered meltdowns are in a more stable state, and as frequent quakes continue to rattle the region.

The worries picked up new traction in recent days after the operator of the plant, Tokyo Electric Power Company, or Tepco, said it had found a slight bulge in one of the walls of the reactor building, stoking fears over the building’s safety.

To try to quell such worries, the government sent the environment and nuclear minister to the plant on Saturday, where he climbed a makeshift staircase in protective garb to look at the structure supporting the pool, which he said appeared sound. The minister, Goshi Hosono, added that although the government accepted Tepco’s assurances that reinforcement work had shored up the building, it ordered the company to conduct further studies because of the bulge.

Some outside experts have also worked to allay fears, saying that the fuel in the pool is now so old that it cannot generate enough heat to start the kind of accident that would allow radioactive material to escape.

But many Japanese scoff at those assurances and point out that even if the building is strong enough, which they question, the jury-rigged cooling system for the pool has already malfunctioned several times, including a 24-hour failure in April. Had the outages continued, they would have left the rods at risk of dangerous overheating. Government critics are especially concerned, since Tepco has said the soonest it could begin emptying the pool is late 2013, dashing hopes for earlier action.

“The No. 4 reactor is visibly damaged and in a fragile state, down to the floor that holds the spent fuel pool,” said Hiroaki Koide, an assistant professor at Kyoto University’s Research Reactor Institute and one of the experts raising concerns. “Any radioactive release could be huge and go directly into the environment.”

Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, expressed similar concerns during a trip to Japan last month.

The fears over the pool at Reactor No. 4 are helping to undermine assurances by Tepco and the Japanese government that the Fukushima plant has been stabilized, and are highlighting how complicated the cleanup of the site, expected to take decades, will be. The concerns are also raising questions about whether Japan’s all-out effort to convince its citizens that nuclear power is safe kept the authorities from exploring other — and some say safer — options for storing used fuel rods.

“It was taboo to raise questions about the spent fuel that was piling up,” said Hideo Kimura, who worked as a nuclear fuel engineer at the Fukushima Daiichi plant in the 1990s. “But it was clear that there was nowhere for the spent fuel to go.”

The worst-case situations for Reactor No. 4 would be for the pool to run dry if there is another problem with the cooling system and the rods catch fire, releasing enormous amounts of radioactive material, or for fission to restart if the metal panels that separate the rods are knocked over in a quake. That would be especially bad because the pool, unlike reactors, lacks containment vessels to hold in radioactive materials. (Even the roof that used to exist would be no match if the rods caught fire, for instance.)

There is considerable disagreement among scientists over whether such catastrophes are possible. But some argue that whether the chances are small or large, changes should be made quickly because of the magnitude of the potential calamity.

(Full article at the link)

By the way, "a slight bulge on one of the walls" that's "stoking fears over the building's safety" is 3.3 centimeters over the length of 13 meters (or 1,300 centimeters).

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New York Times: "Now Is the Season for Japan"

The article by Pico Iyer at New York Times (3/22/2012) seems to say "Nothing has changed about Japan, only better". The author says he's been living around Kyoto for the past 25 years:

...The 9.0 earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdown that hit the country on March 11, 2011, claimed almost 20,000 lives, overturned an economy that had already been foundering through 20 years of recession, and demoralized a citizenry dealing with one suicide every 17 minutes, a loss of direction, and what is now seven prime ministers in fewer than six years.

Yet it also highlighted the resilience, self-possession and community-mindedness that are so striking in Japan; suddenly, the country that had seemed to insist on its difference from the rest of the world could be seen in its more human, compassionate and brave dimensions. Japan has long been what the globally savvy magazine Monocle called, in a recent issue, “The World’s Most Charming Nation”; now it is also one of those most grateful for visitors.

You can read the entire article at the link.

Japan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Japan Tourism Agency can't be happier.

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New York Times: As Reactors Age, the Money to Close Them Lags

US nuclear plant operators may not have enough money to decommission their aging reactors. If the reactors have to be shut down, it may be 20 to 60 years until they have enough money in the funds set up to pay for decommissioning.

The industry claims they are victims of the 2008 financial turmoil and market collapse.

From New York Times by Matthew L. Wald (3/20/2012; emphasis is mine):

WASHINGTON — The operators of 20 of the nation’s aging nuclear reactors, including some whose licenses expire soon, have not saved nearly enough money for prompt and proper dismantling. If it turns out that they must close, the owners intend to let them sit like industrial relics for 20 to 60 years or even longer while interest accrues in the reactors’ retirement accounts.

Decommissioning a reactor is a painstaking and expensive process that involves taking down huge structures and transporting the radioactive materials to the few sites around the country that can bury them. The cost is projected at $400 million to $1 billion per reactor, which in some cases is more than what it cost to build the plants in the 1960s and ’70s.

Mothballing the plants makes hundreds of acres of prime industrial land unavailable for decades and leaves open the possibility that radioactive contamination in the structures could spread. While the radioactivity levels decline over time, many communities worry about safe oversight.

Bills that once seemed far into the future may be coming due. The license for Vermont Yankee in Vernon, Vt., at 40 the nation’s oldest reactor, expires on Wednesday, for example. And while the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has granted its owner, Entergy, a new 20-year permit, the State of Vermont is trying to close the plant.

In New York, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo has vowed to force the two operating reactors at another Entergy plant, Indian Point, 35 miles north of Midtown Manhattan, to shut down when their licenses expire in 2013 and 2015 by denying them state environmental permits.

Entergy is at least $90 million short of the projected $560 million cost of dismantling Vermont Yankee; the company is at least $500 million short of the $1.5 billion estimated cost of dismantling Indian Point 2 and 3.

The shortfall raises the possibility that Vermont could tend one sleeping reactor for decades while New York oversees three; Unit 1 , another reactor at Indian Point, shut down in 1974 and has yet to be dismantled.

Even the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s chairman is uneasy about the prospect of a 60-year wait.

“These facilities should be cleaned up, and their footprints reduced as much as possible so that these areas can be returned to other productive uses within the community,” the chairman, Gregory B. Jaczko, said recently.

Gil C. Quiniones, the president and chief executive of the New York Power Authority, a state utility that sold Indian Point 3 to Entergy in 2000, called Entergy’s failure to plan for or finance the decommissioning of Indian Point in real time “stunningly irresponsible.”

“Delaying action for 60 years — when Entergy might no longer even exist — is offensive to the communities of Westchester County and the people of New York,” he said. James Steets, a spokesman for Entergy, said that financing would not be a problem because the company still expects to obtain new 20-year licenses for Units 2 and 3, which would allow time for savings to grow, and to prevail on the state permit issue.

Assuming that the plants remain open for two more decades, the company has promised Westchester County that it will decommission Indian Point in a “reasonable” period of time after the reactors close, probably in the 2030s.

Of the 20 reactors that lack the money for swift deconstruction, the owners hope that license renewals from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission will make the problem go away. For the plants that are fighting with their host states, Indian Point and Vermont Yankee, the federal courts may have the final say on whether and how long they keep operating. (A large demonstration in favor of closing the plant is planned for Wednesday at Vermont Yankee.)

The remaining 84 active reactors have enough savings on hand to satisfy the commission’s minimum financing requirements for eventual dismantling, some of them because they won license extensions.

The nuclear industry had been counting on steady returns on the funds and did not anticipate the 2008 market crash. Altogether the nation’s 104 power reactors have about $40 billion on hand. “A lot of decommissioning funds did take a hit at the nadir of the economic crisis,” said Scott Burnell, a spokesman for the regulatory commission.

One plant, Palisades in western Michigan, had $597.6 million saved up at the end of 2006, but the account was down to $218.8 million two years later and was only $279.2 million by the end of 2010, the most recent figures show.

Bruce Biewald, an economist who specializes in electricity economics at Synapse Energy, a Boston consulting firm, said the mothball strategy carries risks that could outweigh benefits. Proponents say “it’s like magic — compound interest on the one hand and radioactive decay on the other,” he said. (Because radioactivity levels decline over time, deconstruction workers would ultimately be exposed to less contamination.) But future investment returns could prove bleak, Mr. Biewald warns, and anticipated deconstruction costs could easily rise.

Responding to a petition from Sherwood Martinelli, an antinuclear activist who lives near Indian Point, Dr. Jaczko, the regulatory commission chairman, sought a shorter period between closing and dismantling.

But in October, Dr. Jaczko was outvoted 4 to 1 by his fellow commissioners. And the commission’s staff said that even 60 years was not a hard-and-fast outer time limit for suspending a reactor’s operations.

In the industry, this status is known as Safstor and it usually involves putting the spent nuclear fuel into storage casks on site, draining many of the plant’s fluids, making security arrangements and maintaining the reactor so it looks like a decent neighbor.

Environmental experts say the plants can be dangerous when they are not running. In a letter, the three members of Vermont’s Congressional delegation pointed out that 55,000 gallons of contaminated water spilled out of a mothballed plant in Illinois after a pipe froze. An attentive night watchman was credited with catching the spill in time to contain it.

Indian Point 1 has leaked a variety of radioactive materials into the soil on the banks of the Hudson in the 38 years since it closed, a point acknowledged by Entergy, which responded by emptying a spent fuel pool that was the source of the problem. The environmental group Riverkeeper argues that this is a harbinger of further trouble if Units 2 and 3 enter Safstor.

Compounding the worries about radioactive materials, the nation still lacks a permanent repository for spent nuclear fuel after decades of jockeying by politicians who sought to bar it from their backyards. So the fuel at the sleeping reactors will remain on site.

Twelve reactors across the country have been retired in the last three decades, all on short notice, because of a design or safety flaw that the economics did not justify fixing. The low price of natural gas, a competing fuel, makes the economic lifetime of existing reactors uncertain.

Some have been decommissioned in a few years, like Connecticut Yankee, whose owners, a group of New England utilities, footed the cost. Decommissioning started two years after its 1996 shutdown and was completed in 2005 at a cost of $871 million.

In Haddam, Conn., officials are still advertising for a new industrial tenant for its former site on the east bank of the Connecticut River.

Asked if tearing it down had been the right call, Paul J. DeStefano, the town’s first selectman and top official, said, “I’m a little hesitant, from a layman’s standpoint, of having something sitting around for 60 years. It just doesn’t sound right.”

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NY Times: "A Confused Nuclear Cleanup" (And Needless One at That...)

A day laborer wiping down windows at an abandoned school nearby shrugged at the work crew’s haphazard approach. “We are all amateurs,” he said. “Nobody really knows how to clean up radiation.”

Decontamination is a big business where a day laborer with no skills can earn $325 a day, says New York Times' article by Hiroko Tabuchi on February 10, 2012:

IITATE, Japan — As 500 workers in hazmat suits and respirator masks fanned out to decontaminate this village 20 miles from the ravaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactors, their confusion was apparent.

“Dig five centimeters or 10 centimeters deep here?” a site supervisor asked his colleagues, pointing to a patch of radioactive topsoil to be removed. He then gestured across the village square toward the community center. “Isn’t that going to be demolished? Shall we decontaminate it or not?”

A day laborer wiping down windows at an abandoned school nearby shrugged at the work crew’s haphazard approach. “We are all amateurs,” he said. “Nobody really knows how to clean up radiation.”

Nobody may really know how. But that has not deterred the Japanese government from starting to hand out an initial $13 billion in contracts meant to rehabilitate the more than 8,000-square-mile region most exposed to radioactive fallout — an area nearly as big as New Jersey. The main goal is to enable the return of many of the 80,000 or more displaced people nearest the site of last March’s nuclear disaster, including the 6,500 villagers of Iitate.

It is far from clear, though, that the unproved cleanup methods will be effective.

Even more disturbing to critics of the decontamination program is the fact that the government awarded the first contracts to three giant construction companies — corporations that have no more expertise in radiation cleanup than anyone else does, but that profited hugely from Japan’s previous embrace of nuclear power.

It was these same three companies that helped build 45 of Japan’s 54 nuclear plants — including the reactor buildings and other plants at Fukushima Daiichi that could not withstand the tsunami that caused a catastrophic failure — according to data from Citizens’ Nuclear Information Center, a watchdog group.

One of them, the Taisei Corporation, leads the consortium that sent out the workers now tramping around Iitate in hazmat suits. Consortiums led by Taisei and the other two big companies — Obayashi and Kajima — among them received contracts for the government’s first 12 pilot decontamination projects, totaling about $93 million.

“It’s a scam,” said Kiyoshi Sakurai, a critic of the nuclear industry and a former researcher at a forerunner to the Japan Atomic Energy Agency, which is overseeing this phase of decontamination. “Decontamination is becoming big business.”

The cleanup contracts, Mr. Sakurai and other critics contend, are emblematic of the too-cozy ties they say have long existed between the nuclear industry and government.

“The Japanese nuclear industry is run so that the more you fail, the more money you receive,” Mr. Sakurai said.

The Japan Atomic Energy Agency said the construction giants would not necessarily receive the bulk of the future work, which will be contracted out by the Environment Ministry. Company officials, however, have indicated they expected to continue serving as primary contractors.

“We are building expertise as we work,” said Fumiyasu Hirai, a Taisei spokesman. “It is a process of trial and error, but we are well-equipped for the job.”

Kajima and Obayashi said they could not comment on the projects under way.

An Environment Ministry official, Katsumasa Seimaru, said that big construction companies were best equipped to gather the necessary manpower, oversee large-scale projects like decontaminating highways and mountains, and properly protect and monitor radiation exposure among the cleanup workers.

“Whether you promoted nuclear or not beforehand isn’t as important as what you can do to help with the cleanup,” Mr. Seimaru said.

Other construction companies are scrambling to get in on the action. In late January, the Maeda Corporation, another general contractor, won a cleanup contract, this one awarded by the Environment Ministry. Maeda bid to take the job for less than half the expected costs, an apparent loss-leader maneuver to get a foot in the door that has drawn complaints from other bidders, including Taisei.

Early this month, a city just outside the exclusion zone, Minamisoma, said that it would also allocate 40 billion yen ($525 million) worth of decontamination projects to groups led by national general contractors. Whatever the controversy, there is no question Japan is undertaking a crucial task. The endeavor is meant to go far beyond the partial cleanup that followed the 1986 Chernobyl disaster in Ukraine, which left a 19-mile radius around the plant that, even a quarter-century later, remains largely off limits.

But there is little consensus on what cleanup methods might prove effective in Japan. Radioactive particles are easily carried by wind and rain, and could recontaminate towns and cities even after a cleanup crew has passed through, experts say.

“No experts yet exist in decontamination, and there is no reason why the state should pay big money to big construction companies,” said Yoichi Tao, a visiting professor in physics at Kogakuin University who is helping Iitate villagers test decontamination methods on their own. He is also monitoring the effectiveness of the energy agency’s decontamination projects.

Though big companies have won the main contracts so far, the actual cleanup — essentially a simple but tedious task of scrubbing and digging — is being carried out by numerous subcontractors and sub-subcontractors, who in turn rely on untrained casual laborers to do the dirtiest decontamination work.

This tiered structure, in which fees are siphoned off and wages dwindle each step down the ladder, follows the familiar pattern of Japan’s nuclear and construction industries.

On the Iitate project, most of the workers come from elsewhere. The self-described amateur wiping down the school windows, who would identify himself only as Shibata, said he was an autoworker by trade who resided about 160 miles away, just east of Tokyo in Chiba. He said he had jumped at news that there was “decent-paying work but not so dangerous” in Fukushima.

Mr. Shibata said he was working two four-hour shifts a day and was being put up in a local spa resort. Although he and other workers declined to discuss their wages, local news media have reported that the pay for decontamination work can reach about 25,000 yen, or around $325 a day.

He spoke as he wiped a window with a paper towel. “One swipe per towel, or the radioactive particles just get spread around,” he said. “Not that you can see the radiation at all.”

Indeed. A similar cleanup project at the Iitate community center last fall, undertaken by the local government, was unable to reduce the radiation to safe levels.

The pilot projects led by Taisei and the other contractors have already hit snags. The government, for example, failed to anticipate communities’ reluctance to store tons of soil scraped from contaminated yards and fields.

Some critics, meanwhile, have argued that local companies and governments could perform the cleanup work for much less money, while creating local jobs.

Some Iitate villagers have enlisted the help of university experts to take matters into their own hands. Their experiments, they say, suggest that decontamination must start on the forested mountains that cover three-quarters of Iitate’s land area.

“Even if they clean up our homes, the radiation will sweep down from the mountains again and recontaminate everything,” said Muneo Kanno, a 60-year-old farmer. Like many other residents of Iitate, he stayed in the village for more than a month after the disaster, unaware that the radioactive plumes had reached Iitate.

Mr. Kanno fled the village in May but returns on weekends to try different decontamination methods. Recently he took Mr. Tao, the visiting physicist, to a nearby mountain to test the effectiveness of removing dead leaves from the ground to reduce radiation levels.

There is no public financing for their work, which is supported by donations and the volunteer efforts of the villagers themselves. On a recent morning, about a dozen volunteers, some as old as 70, scrambled up a snowy mountainside to rake leaves into cloth sacks, wearing only regular clothes and surgical masks.

“We know the land here far better than the construction companies do,” Mr. Kanno said. “We are afraid that the money is just disappearing into thin air.”

What is the point of decontaminating Iitate-mura? Why do they lie to day laborers by telling them the location is "not so dangerous"? Outside the immediate vicinity of the plant, Iitate-mura is one of the most contaminated places in entire Fukushima. People shouldn't be living there or working there, but they do, despite the village having been designated as "planned evacuation zone".

There are neptunium and plutonium in Iitate-mura's soil, spiders are concentrating radioactive silver. Back in early April last year, IAEA said they had found 20 million becquerels/kg of iodine-131 from the soil.

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New York Times: Japan Split on Hope for Vast Radiation Cleanup

A very well-written article from New York Times by Martin Fackler, on December 6, 2011. I translated this article and posted on my Japanese blog, but the futility of so-called "decontamination" is best summarized, to me, by the photo that the New York Times put at the top of the article:

Even the ardent supporter for the residents' return by decontaminating the towns and cities, Professor Tatsuhiko Kodama of Tokyo University, has this to say:

“I believe it is possible to save Fukushima,” said the supporter, Tatsuhiko Kodama, director of the Radioisotope Center at the University of Tokyo. “But many evacuated residents must accept that it won’t happen in their lifetimes.”

The article correctly identifies Japan's urge or obsession with "decontamination" as a "proxy" war - to prove that Japan still matters in the world by showcasing the rebirth with determination and superior technology.

Well, that superior technology, we know now, consists of high-pressure washers, leaf collectors, bloom, gloves and rain boots, soil scrapers, bulldozers, shovels, and sheer manpower exposing the ordinary citizen volunteers to a pre-Fukushima annual radiation dosage level of a nuclear worker (50 millisieverts).

Determination, yes. But that is getting akin to fighting B29 (World War II bomber) with bamboo spears. You could say it's totally in line with what Dr. "Damashita" Yamashita said to the residents of Fukushima City as the radioactive plume was sweeping over the city on March 21 - "If you smile, radiation won't come to you."

From New York Times (12/6/2011; emphasis is mine):

FUTABA, Japan — Futaba is a modern-day ghost town — not a boomtown gone bust, not even entirely a victim of the devastating earthquake and tsunami that leveled other parts of Japan’s northeast coast.

Its traditional wooden homes have begun to sag and collapse since they were abandoned in March by residents fleeing the nuclear plant on the edge of town that began spiraling toward disaster. Roofs possibly damaged by the earth’s shaking have let rain seep in, starting the rot that is eating at the houses from the inside.

The roadway arch at the entrance to the empty town almost seems a taunt. It reads:

“Nuclear energy: a correct understanding brings a prosperous lifestyle.”

Those who fled Futaba are among the nearly 90,000 people evacuated from a 12-mile zone around the Fukushima Daiichi plant and another area to the northwest contaminated when a plume from the plant scattered radioactive cesium and iodine.

Now, Japan is drawing up plans for a cleanup that is both monumental and unprecedented, in the hopes that those displaced can go home.

The debate over whether to repopulate the area, if trial cleanups prove effective, has become a proxy for a larger battle over the future of Japan. Supporters see rehabilitating the area as a chance to showcase the country’s formidable determination and superior technical skills — proof that Japan is still a great power.

For them, the cleanup is a perfect metaphor for Japan’s rebirth.

Critics counter that the effort to clean Fukushima Prefecture could end up as perhaps the biggest of Japan’s white-elephant public works projects — and yet another example of post-disaster Japan reverting to the wasteful ways that have crippled economic growth for two decades.

So far, the government is following a pattern set since the nuclear accident, dismissing dangers, often prematurely, and laboring to minimize the scope of the catastrophe. Already, the trial cleanups have stalled: the government failed to anticipate communities’ reluctance to store tons of soil to be scraped from contaminated yards and fields.

And a radiation specialist who tested the results of an extensive local cleanup in a nearby city found that exposure levels remained above international safety standards for long-term habitation.

Even a vocal supporter of repatriation suggests that the government has not yet leveled with its people about the seriousness of their predicament.

“I believe it is possible to save Fukushima,” said the supporter, Tatsuhiko Kodama, director of the Radioisotope Center at the University of Tokyo. “But many evacuated residents must accept that it won’t happen in their lifetimes.”

To judge the huge scale of what Japan is contemplating, consider that experts say residents can return home safely only after thousands of buildings are scrubbed of radioactive particles and much of the topsoil from an area the size of Connecticut is replaced.

Even forested mountains will probably need to be decontaminated, which might necessitate clear-cutting and literally scraping them clean.

The Soviet Union did not attempt such a cleanup after the Chernobyl accident of 1986, the only nuclear disaster larger than that at Fukushima Daiichi. The government instead relocated about 300,000 people, abandoning vast tracts of farmland.

Many Japanese officials believe that they do not have that luxury; the area contaminated above an international safety standard for the general public covers more than an estimated 3 percent of the landmass of this densely populated nation.

“We are different from Chernobyl,” said Toshitsuna Watanabe, 64, the mayor of Okuma, one of the towns that was evacuated. “We are determined to go back. Japan has the will and the technology to do this.”

Such resolve reflects, in part, a deep attachment to home for rural Japanese like Mr. Watanabe, whose family has lived in Okuma for 19 generations. Their heartfelt appeals to go back have won wide sympathy across Japan, making it hard for people to oppose their wishes.

But quiet resistance has begun to grow, both among those who were displaced and those who fear the country will need to sacrifice too much without guarantees that a multibillion-dollar cleanup will provide enough protection.

Soothing pronouncements by local governments and academics about the eventual ability to live safely near the ruined plant can seem to be based on little more than hope.

No one knows how much exposure to low doses of radiation causes a significant risk of premature death. That means Japanese living in contaminated areas are likely to become the subjects of future studies — the second time in seven decades that Japanese have become a test case for the effects of radiation exposure, after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The national government has declared itself responsible for cleaning up only the towns in the evacuation zone; local governments have already begun cleaning cities and towns outside that area.

Inside the 12-mile ring, which includes Futaba, the Environmental Ministry has pledged to reduce radiation levels by half within two years — a relatively easy goal because short-lived isotopes will deteriorate. The bigger question is how long it will take to reach the ultimate goal of bringing levels down to about 1 millisievert per year, the annual limit for the general public from artificial sources of radiation that is recommended by the International Commission on Radiological Protection. That is a much more daunting task given that it will require removing cesium 137, an isotope that will remain radioactive for decades.

Trial cleanups have been delayed for months by the search for a storage site for enough contaminated dirt to fill 33 domed football stadiums. Even evacuated communities have refused to accept it.

And Tomoya Yamauchi, the radiation expert from Kobe University who performed tests in Fukushima City after extensive remediation efforts, found that radiation levels inside homes had dropped by only about 25 percent. That left parts of the city with levels of radiation four times higher than the recommended maximum exposure.

“We can only conclude that these efforts have so far been a failure,” he said.

Minamisoma, a small city whose center sits about 15 miles from the nuclear plant, is a good place to get a sense of the likely limitations of decontamination efforts.

The city has cleaned dozens of schools, parks and sports facilities in hopes of enticing back the 30,000 of its 70,000 residents who have yet to return since the accident. On a recent morning, a small army of bulldozers and dump trucks were resurfacing a high school soccer field and baseball diamond with a layer of reddish brown dirt. Workers buried the old topsoil in a deep hole in a corner of the soccer field. The crew’s overseer, Masahiro Sakura, said readings at the field had dropped substantially, but he remains anxious because many parts of the city were not expected to be decontaminated for at least two years.

These days, he lets his three young daughters outdoors only to go to school and play in a resurfaced park. “Is it realistic to live like this?” he asked.

The challenges are sure to be more intense inside the 12-mile zone, where radiation levels in some places have reached nearly 510 millisieverts a year, 25 times above the cutoff for evacuation.

Already, the proposed repatriation has opened rifts among those who have been displaced. The 11,500 displaced residents of Okuma — many of whom now live in rows of prefabricated homes 60 miles inland — are enduring just such a divide.

The mayor, Mr. Watanabe, has directed the town to draw up its own plan to return to its original location within three to five years by building a new town on farmland in Okuma’s less contaminated western edge.

Although Mr. Watanabe won a recent election, his challenger found significant support among residents with small children for his plan to relocate to a different part of Japan. Mitsue Ikeda, one supporter, said she would never go home, especially after a medical exam showed that her 8-year-old son, Yuma, had ingested cesium.

“It’s too dangerous,” Ms. Ikeda, 47, said. “How are we supposed to live, by wearing face masks all the time?”

She, like many other evacuees, berated the government, saying it was fixated on cleaning up to avoid paying compensation.

Many older residents, by contrast, said they should be allowed to return.

“Smoking cigarettes is more dangerous than radiation,” said Eiichi Tsukamoto, 70, who worked at the Daiichi plant for 40 years as a repairman. “We can make Okuma a model to the world of how to restore a community after a nuclear accident.”

But even Mr. Kodama, the radiation expert who supports a government cleanup, said such a victory would be hollow, and short-lived if young people did not return. He suggested that the government start rebuilding communities by rebuilding trust eroded over months of official evasion.

“Saving Fukushima requires not just money and effort, but also faith,” he said. “There is no point if only older people go back.”

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: December 9, 2011

An earlier version of this article said the evacuation zone covered more than 3 percent of Japan’s landmass; in fact it is the area contaminated above an international safety standard for the general public that covers roughly 3 percent of the country’s landmass.

Professor Kodama's last remark doesn't make sense to me. He said earlier that in some locations in Fukushima, going back won't happen in people's lifetimes. But then at the end he says it's no use if only older people go back. Well, after 30 years or so, today's young people, in their 20s and 30s, will be in 50s and 60s. No longer young. If they have children, they will have grown up to be in their 20s and 30s. Would they want to go back to Fukushima?

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New York Times Article on #Fukushima I Nuclear Reactor Hints at Fresh Troubles

The New York Times article is based on the leaked confidential assessment by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

In the assessment, according to the article, the NRC thinks:

1. There may be no water in the Reactor Pressure Vessel of the Reactor 1;
2. Spent fuel rods may have blown up and spread to 1 miles from the reactors;
3. Too much water in Containment Vessels could rupture the Vessels in a strong aftershock.

The 1st explains why the temperature of the RPV of the Reactor 1 has not come down below 200 degrees Celsius, despite cooling with sea water and now with fresh water.

(TEPCO is injecting nitrogen gas in the Containment Vessel of the Reactor 1. I sure hope they won't end up blowing it up instead...)

OK, people who want to scream at NY Times for fear-mongering, come out and scream!

NY Times says the NRC assessment seems to have been based mostly on the information shared with them by the Japanese government and TEPCO.

From New York Times (emphasis added; 4/5/2011):

United States government engineers sent to help with the crisis in Japan are warning that the troubled nuclear plant there is facing a wide array of fresh threats that could persist indefinitely, and that in some cases are expected to increase as a result of the very measures being taken to keep the plant stable, according to a confidential assessment prepared by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Among the new threats that were cited in the assessment, dated March 26, are the mounting stresses placed on the containment structures as they fill with radioactive cooling water, making them more vulnerable to rupture in one of the aftershocks rattling the site after the earthquake and tsunami of March 11. The document also cites the possibility of explosions inside the containment structures due to the release of hydrogen and oxygen from seawater pumped into the reactors, and offers new details on how semimolten fuel rods and salt buildup are impeding the flow of fresh water meant to cool the nuclear cores.

......

The document, which was obtained by The New York Times, provides a more detailed technical assessment than Japanese officials have provided of the conundrum facing the Japanese as they struggle to prevent more fuel from melting at the Fukushima Daiichi plant. But it appears to rely largely on data shared with American experts by the Japanese.

Among other problems, the document raises new questions about whether pouring water on nuclear fuel in the absence of functioning cooling systems can be sustained indefinitely. Experts have said the Japanese need to continue to keep the fuel cool for many months until the plant can be stabilized, but there is growing awareness that the risks of pumping water on the fuel present a whole new category of challenges that the nuclear industry is only beginning to comprehend.

The document also suggests that fragments or particles of nuclear fuel from spent fuel pools above the reactors were blown “up to one mile from the units,” and that pieces of highly radioactive material fell between two units and had to be “bulldozed over,” presumably to protect workers at the site. The ejection of nuclear material, which may have occurred during one of the earlier hydrogen explosions, may indicate more extensive damage to the extremely radioactive pools than previously disclosed.

......

The assessment provides graphic new detail on the conditions of the damaged cores in reactors 1, 2 and 3. Because slumping fuel and salt from seawater that had been used as a coolant is probably blocking circulation pathways, the water flow in No. 1 “is severely restricted and likely blocked.” Inside the core itself, “there is likely no water level,” the assessment says, adding that as a result, “it is difficult to determine how much cooling is getting to the fuel.” Similar problems exist in No. 2 and No. 3, although the blockage is probably less severe, the assessment says.

.......

A rise in the water level of the containment structures has often been depicted as a possible way to immerse and cool the fuel. The assessment, however, warns that “when flooding containment, consider the implications of water weight on seismic capability of containment.”

Experts in nuclear plant design say that this warning refers to the enormous stress put on the containment structures by the rising water. The more water in the structures, the more easily a large aftershock could rupture one of them.

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#Fukushima I Nuke Plant: Case of Disappearing Paragraphs, NY Times Version

Reference to Reactor 3 containment vessel being cracked has been scrubbed clean.

Washington's Blog links and cites a segment from New York Times March 25 article in which an anonymous Japanese executive in the nuclear industry says there is a huge crack on the containment vessel of the Reactor 3 in Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant.

I somehow managed to get to the said NY Times article and looked for that segment. There is no such segment:

Concerns about Reactor No. 3 have surfaced before. Japanese officials said nine days ago that the reactor vessel might have been damaged.

Hidehiko Nishiyama, deputy director general of the Japan Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, mentioned damage to the reactor vessel on Friday as a possible explanation of how water in the adjacent containment building had become so radioactive.

Michael Friedlander, a former nuclear power plant operator in the United States, said that the presence of radioactive cobalt and molybdenum in water samples taken from the basement of the turbine building raised the possibility of corrosion as a cause.

But I located the missing paragraphs between the 1st and the second paragraphs above, by locating a cached article on the mirror site. Thank you Google. And after these missing paragraphs, Michael Friedlander appears, not Nishiyama.

Here's the segment in the original New York Times, from the cached article of the mirror site (NDTV.com). So up till March 30, the article continued to have the reference to the anonymous executive saying Reactor 3's containment vessel has a huge crack. NY Times writers say "reactor vessel", which is rather imprecise but means the containment vessel:

Concerns about Reactor No. 3 have surfaced before. Japanese officials said nine days ago that the reactor vessel may have been damaged.

A senior nuclear executive who insisted on anonymity but has broad contacts in Japan said that there was a long vertical crack running down the side of the reactor vessel itself. The crack runs down below the water level in the reactor and has been leaking fluids and gases, he said.

The severity of the radiation burns to the injured workers is consistent with contamination by water that had been in contact with damaged fuel rods, the executive said.

"There is a definite, definite crack in the vessel -- it's up and down and it's large," he said. "The problem with cracks is they do not get smaller."

The contamination of the water in the basement of the turbine building where the workers were injured -- a separate building adjacent to the one that houses the reactor -- poses a real challenge for efforts to bring crucial cooling pumps and other equipment back online.

"They can't even figure out how to get that out, it's so hot" in terms of radioactivity, he said. A big worry about reactor No. 3 is the mox fuel. The nuclear industry has no experience with mox leaks, and it is possible that unusual patterns in the dispersal of radioactivity from the plant partly result from the mox, he said.

But Michael Friedlander, a former nuclear power plant operator in the United States, said that the presence of radioactive cobalt and molybdenum in water samples taken from the basement of the turbine building raised the possibility of a very different leak. ...

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NYT: Tea Party Movement Draws on "Long-Ago Texts by Dead Writers" (= AUSTRIANS!)

Hey hey hey... Is New York Times finally getting it?

Movement of the Moment Looks to Long-Ago Texts
(Kate Zernike, 10/01/2010 New York Times)

The Tea Party is a thoroughly modern movement, organizing on Twitter and Facebook to become the most dynamic force of the midterm elections.

But when it comes to ideology, it has reached back to dusty bookshelves for long-dormant ideas.

It has resurrected once-obscure texts by dead writers — in some cases elevating them to best-seller status — to form a kind of Tea Party canon. Recommended by Tea Party icons like Ron Paul and Glenn Beck, the texts are being quoted everywhere from protest signs to Republican Party platforms.

And what are those texts by dead writers? They are 'Austrian' dead writers:
(Links go to Lewrockwell.com's pages that list their books.)

Frédéric Bastiat
Friedrich Hayek
Ludwig von Mises

If they haven't done so, Tea Partiers should also read:

Henry Hazlitt
Murray Rothbard
Tom Wood
Thomas DiLorenzo
Ron Paul
Peter Schiff

And of course much more at:
Lewrockwell.com
Ludwig von Mises Institute

The NYT article seems to correctly identify the Tea Party Movements as movements "built around ideas rather than leaders".

Ding ding ding ding...

That's what Ron Paul's movement was all about for 2008 election: self-organizing, around ideas. Instead of waving and screaming in ecstasy at the sight of their dear leader like Democrats did, Ron Paul supporters went nuts when Ron Paul said the Federal Reserve must go.

And o horror of horror, as New York Times reports, these "Teabaggers" (as liberal blog writers derisively call Tea Partiers) are actually "studying" these dead men's books!

Doug Bramley, a postal worker and Tea Party activist in Maine, picked up “The Road to Serfdom” after Mr. Beck mentioned it on air in June. (Next up for Mr. Bramley, another classic of libertarian thought: “I’ve got to read ‘Atlas Shrugged,’ ” he said.) He found Hayek “dense reading,” but he loved “The 5000 Year Leap.”

“You don’t read it,” Mr. Bramley said, “you study it.”

Across the country, many Tea Party groups are doing just that, often taking a chapter to discuss at each meeting.

Doing what? People actually studying and discussing the ideas other than those of John Maynard Keynes and Paul Krugman? What heresy!

NYT is even starting to recognize that there's Glenn Beck's (and Sara Palin's) version of Tea Party and there are other versions, not the monolithic right-wing fringe movement sponsored by Koch brothers as mostly portrayed in the MSM like New Yorker magazine.

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