AP: "Probe finds Japan withheld risks of nuke disaster"

Here's AP's Japanese reporter's take on the report by the private independent investigation commission set up by the Rebuild Japan Initiative Foundation (RJIF).

One of the issues that AP focuses in the article below is whether TEPCO did want to abandon the plant on March 15. The private RJIF commission sides with the Kan administration that TEPCO did, and only PM Kan's strong word persuaded TEPCO to keep a small number of workers to continue to work on the plant.

TEPCO has said all President Shimizu wanted to do was to temporarily remove non-essential workers at the plant. Why? Probably because of the extremely high radiation level on the plant. The radiation spiked up to 1 sievert/hour in the morning of March 16, 2011 (JST), as AP reported on March 15, 2011 (US EST) and BBC mentioned in the documentary "Inside the Meltdown" aired on February 23, 2012.

I wonder if Mr. Kan, who had majored in applied physics (engineering) in his college and became a patent agent after graduation, knew about the radiation level of 1 sievert/hour and still insisted all workers to remain on the plant no matter what, even if there were nothing TEPCO alone could do at that point.

The RJIF has already run out of copies of the report which they printed only a small number of copies. The message on their website says they are thinking of ways to disseminate the report widely.

From AP via Yahoo (2/28/2012; emphasis is mine):

By Yuri Kageyama

TOKYO (AP) -- The Japanese government withheld information about the full danger of last year's nuclear disaster from its own people and from the United States, putting U.S.-Japan relations at risk in the first days after the accident, according to an independent report released Tuesday.

The report, compiled from interviews with more than 300 people, delivers a scathing view of how leaders played down the risks of the meltdowns at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant that followed a massive March 11 earthquake and tsunami.

The report by the private Rebuild Japan Initiative Foundation also paints a picture of confusion during the days immediately after the accident. It says the U.S. government was frustrated by the scattered information provided by Japan and was skeptical whether it was true.

The U.S. advised Americans to leave an area within 50 miles (80 kilometers) of the plant, far bigger than the 12-mile (20-kilometer) Japanese evacuation area, because of concerns that the accident was worse than Japan was reporting.

The misunderstandings were gradually cleared up after a bilateral committee was set up on March 22 and began regular meetings, according to the 400-page report.

The report, compiled by scholars, lawyers and other experts, credits then-Prime Minister Naoto Kan for ordering Tokyo Electric Power Co., the utility running the plant, not to withdraw its staff and to keep fighting to bring it under control.

TEPCO's president at the time, Masataka Shimizu, called Kan on March 15 and said he wanted to abandon the plant and have all 600 TEPCO staff flee, the report said. That would have allowed the situation to spiral out of control, resulting in a much larger release of radiation.

A group of about 50 workers was eventually able to bring the plant under control.

TEPCO, which declined to take part in the investigation, has denied it planned to abandon Fukushima Dai-ichi. The report notes the denial, but says Kan and other officials had the clear understanding that TEPCO had asked to leave.

But the report criticizes Kan for attempting to micromanage the disaster and for not releasing critical information on radiation leaks, thereby creating widespread distrust of the authorities among Japanese.

Kan's office did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the report.

Kan acknowledged in a recent interview with The Associated Press that the release of information was sometimes slow and at times wrong. He blamed a lack of reliable data at the time and denied the government hid such information from the public.

It will take decades to fully decommission Fukushima Dai-ichi. Although one of the damaged reactor buildings has been repaired, others remain in shambles. A group of journalists, including a reporter from The Associated Press, were given a tour of the plant on Tuesday.

Workers have used tape to mend cracks caused by freezing weather in plastic hoses on temporary equipment installed to cool the hobbled reactors.

"I have to acknowledge that they are still rather fragile," plant chief Takeshi Takahashi said of the safety measures.

The area is still contaminated with radiation, complicating the work. It already has involved hundreds of thousands of workers, who have to quit when they reach the maximum allowed radiation exposure of 100 millisieverts a year.

The report includes a document describing a worst-case scenario that Kan and the chief of the Japan Atomic Energy Commission secretly discussed two weeks after the disaster.

That scenario involved the possibility of more nuclear fuel rods burning, causing the release of more radiation and requiring the evacuation of a much wider region, including Tokyo.

The report also concludes that government oversight of nuclear plant safety had been inadequate, ignoring the risk of tsunami and the need for plant design renovations, and instead clinging to a "myth of safety."

"The idea of upgrading a plant was taboo," said Koichi Kitazawa, a scholar who heads the commission that prepared the report. "We were just lucky that Japan was able to avoid the worst-case scenario. But there is no guarantee this kind of luck will prevail next time."

___

Associated Press writer Mari Yamaguchi in Okuma, Japan, contributed to this report.

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AP Artricle on Fuku-I 45-Tonne Water Leak (No Mention of Strontium)

AP decided to focus only on relatively small numbers for radioactive cesium in the 45 tonnes of water that was found leaking from the evaporative condensation apparatus at Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant on Sunday.

No mention of strontium, 100,000 becquerels/cubic centimeter or 100 million becquerels/liter, anywhere.

From AP via Washington Post (12/5/2011):

TOKYO — Japan’s crippled nuclear power plant leaked about 45 tons of highly radioactive water from a purification device over the weekend, its operator said, and some may have drained into the ocean.

The leak is a reminder of the difficulties facing Tokyo Electric Power Co. as it tries to meet its goal of bringing the tsunami-damaged Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant to a cold shutdown by year’s end.

pool of radioactive water was discovered midday Sunday around a decontamination device, TEPCO said in a statement on its website. After the equipment was turned off, the leak appeared to stop. Later, workers found a crack in a concrete barrier leaking the contaminated water into a gutter that leads to the ocean.

TEPCO estimated about 300 liters leaked out before the crack was blocked with sandbags.

Officials were checking whether any water had reached the nearby ocean.

The leakage of radioactive water from the Fukushima plant into the Pacific Ocean in the weeks after the March 11 accident caused widespread concern that seafood in the coastal waters would be contaminated.

The pooled water around the purification device was measured Sunday at 16,000 bequerels per liter of cesium-134, and 29,000 bequerels per liter of cesium-137, TEPCO said. That’s 270 times and 322 times higher, respectively, than government safety limits, according to the Citizens’ Nuclear Information Center in Tokyo.

Cesium-137 is dangerous because it can last for decades in the environment, releasing cancer-causing radiation. The half-life of cesium-134 is about two years, while the half-life of cesium-137 is about 30 years.

TEPCO is using the purification devices to decontaminate water that has been cooling the reactors. Three of the plant’s reactor cores mostly melted down when the March 11 tsunami knocked out the plant’s cooling system.

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A Solitary Farmer in Tomioka-Machi: "I'll Never Leave, I'll Never Be Beaten"

AP News reported on August 31 about Mr. Naoto Matsumura, who refuses to leave his home and his farm in Tomioka-machi, which lies in the no-entry evacuation zone within the 20 kilometer radius from Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant. His family has farmed in that location for 5 generations.

"I'll never be beaten", he says. If he wants to stay, it's his right to do so, he also says.

(h/t Irene)

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AP: "Quake risk to reactors greater than thought"

"Gov't says 27 US reactors could be more vulnerable to earthquakes than previously thought", according to the article on 9/2/2011.

From AP:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The risk that an earthquake would cause a severe accident at a U.S. nuclear plant is greater than previously thought, 24 times as high in one case, according to an AP analysis of preliminary government data. The nation's nuclear regulator believes a quarter of America's reactors may need modifications to make them safer.

The threat came into sharp focus last week, when shaking from the largest earthquake to hit Virginia in 117 years appeared to exceed what the North Anna nuclear power plant northwest of Richmond was built to sustain.

The two North Anna reactors are among 27 in the eastern and central U.S. that a preliminary Nuclear Regulatory Commission review has said may need upgrades. That's because those plants are more likely to get hit with an earthquake larger than the one their design was based on. Just how many nuclear power plants are more vulnerable won't be determined until all operators recalculate their own seismic risk based on new assessments by geologists, something the agency plans to request later this year. The NRC on Thursday issued a draft of that request for public comment.

The review, launched well before the East Coast quake and the Japan nuclear disaster in March, marks the first complete update to seismic risk in years for the nation's 104 existing reactors, despite research showing greater hazards.

The NRC and the industry say reactors are safe as they are, for now. The average risk to U.S. reactors of core damage from a quake remains low, at one accident every 500 years, according to the AP analysis of NRC data.

The overall risk at a typical reactor among the 27 remains very slight. If the NRC's numbers prove correct, that would mean no more than one core accident from an earthquake in about 30,000 years at the typical reactor among the 27 with increased risk.

But emails obtained in a more than 11,000-page records request by The Associated Press show that NRC experts were worried privately this year that plants needed stronger safeguards to account for the higher risk assessments.

(The article continues.)

What's more interesting than the article is the comment section. Here are some:

- I am suspicious of the anti-nuclear propaganda like this article. Not one person died due to the Japanese nuclear problem. Millions of people die worldwide each year due to pollution from coal and oil fired power plants. ... Nuclear power does not produce CO2. It is the ONLY source powerful enough to supply our modern world. Solar and wind are great - but much too small a source. ...The hysteria over nuclear must stop. Every power source has its problems. Nuclear will not kill the five or six billion eventually that scientists say will happen with increasing CO2.

- That's right- Hack Journalist! Blow Me AP! You fear mongoring POS! DIE AP!

- So a bunch of hack journalists read a bunch of government emails and that makes them nuclear engineers?Give me a freaking break!

You can read the rest of the comments at the link.

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Made-In-Japan Robot "Quince" Joined the Also-Failed at #Fukushima I Nuke Plant

Kurion's water treatment system underperformed by a vast margin, T-Hawk crashed on the roof of the Reactor 2 building, and now the Japanese robot "Quince" got caught in a bad juju at Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant.

"Quince" was designed and developed by Chiba Institute of Technology, and was going to install the water gauge for the highly contaminated water (radiation near the surface of water was 430 millisieverts/hour the other day) in the basement of the Reactor 2's reactor building.

(Photo is from CIT's site. You can see how it is supposed to work here on Youtube.)

Quince tried to go there in the morning of June 24, but it got stuck in the stairway leading to the basement, and had to be retrieved by the carbon-based workers.

From AP Tokyo (6/24/2011):

The Quince robot, developed by Chiba Institute of Technology for nuclear and biological disaster relief activity, had ventured out into the Unit 2 reactor building to set up a gauge to measure the contaminated water pooling in the basement. Radioactivity inside the reactor buildings is too high for workers to take measurements there.

The machine got stuck at a staircase landing and failed to go downstairs, TEPCO spokesman Junichi Matsumoto said. A cable that was supposed to drop a gauge into the basement also malfunctioned.

The workers retrieved the robot and were going to make adjustments before sending it back in for another try, Matsumoto said. He did not elaborate.

TEPCO's handout for the press doesn't make any mention of it, although it does mention the crashed T-Hawk.

By the way, the above AP article, just like any other reports by the Japan-based media, continues to say:

TEPCO and the government have said they hope to achieve a cold shutdown of the reactors by January by bringing the core temperatures to below 100 Celsius (212 Fahrenheit.)

A "cold shutdown" cannot even be defined for a broken reactor where the fuel core had melted away along with control rods and other in-vessel equipment and got out of the Reactor Pressure Vessel and probably out of the Containment Vessel. The RPV is broken, and so is the Containment Vessel. Sure, TEPCO measures temperature of the RPVs, but what does that mean, when the corium is already out of the RPVs? How could a temperature of a broken RPV be an indication for a "cold shutdown"? Do they know how hot the escaped corium is, or where exactly the corium is right now?

Do reporters ask such questions?

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AP: "Tens of Thousands" of Protesters Rallying...

After 17 days of "rallying", you would think AP should know it doesn't look like "tens of thousands" of protesters but rather "millions".

Maybe their reporters are banned from viewing Al Jazeera...

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Health Care Lobbyists Will Save The Day for Obama

according to AP. (Since when are lobbyists praised as a positive force, by a news agency of all people?) Anyway, here's a highly partisan article from such a lobbyist-praising news agency, AP.

Lobbyists the silver lining in health care storm?
(by RICARDO ALONSO-ZALDIVAR, 7/25/09 AP via Yahoo News)

"WASHINGTON – A strong force, perhaps as powerful in Congress as President Barack Obama, is keeping the drive for health care going even as lawmakers seem hopelessly at odds.

"Lobbyists.

"The drug industry, the American Medical Association, hospital groups and the insurance lobby are all saying Congress must make major changes this year. Television ads paid for by drug companies and insurers continued to emphasize the benefits of a health care overhaul — not the groups' objections to some of the proposals."

Note the word "hopelessly" in the first paragraph. To the writer, it's apparently a hopeless situation when the health care reform bill (H.R. 3200) strongly pushed by none other than President Obama hasn't already passed the House. Those pesky lawmakers. How dare they question the wisdom of the bill?

If doctors, hospitals, insurance companies are all for the so-called "reform", as the article claims as a good, positive thing, that is all the more reason NOT to "reform". I've never heard of an industry lobby lobbying for something other than the industry's own interest. Have you?

Now, let's continue with the PR article:

"President Barack Obama on Saturday continued his full-court press to pass health care reform legislation. In his weekly Internet and radio address, Obama cited a new White House study indicating that small businesses pay far more per employee for health insurance than big companies — a disparity he says is "unsustainable — it's unacceptable."

""And it's going to change when I sign health insurance reform into law," Obama said, adding that he has "a sense of urgency about moving this process forward."

"This time, the health care industry groups see a strategic opportunity. As lawmakers squabble, the groups are focused on how to come out ahead in the end game."

Obama's sense of urgency then is clearly fostered by these well-meaning lobbyists. The writer reveals his bias again in the last paragraph. This time, note the word "squabble". Actually reading the bill (H.R. 3200) and arguing the details is "squabble" to this writer.

AP by the way doesn't write like a news agency anymore, in case you haven't noticed. It seems to have become a PR agency for the administration, as their article demonstrated when the climate bill (H.R. 2454) passed the House in June (remember that bill?). Such a volunteerism.

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