Fukushima cleanup delayed again

December 27, 2019 6:00 AM

Japan Times reports that the cleanup of the Fukushima nuclear power plant has been delayed for up to five years. Plant owner TEPCO hopes to complete the cleanup in 30 to 40 years.

One problem is disposal of the contaminated water used to cool stored fuel rods. There's currently 1.2 million tons of the contaminated water, and that's increasing by 170 tons a day. TEPCO says they'll run out of storage for the water in mid-2022. Another earthquake, tsunami, or flood could cause a spill. TEPCO would like to start releasing the water into the ocean or the air. The fishing community has opposed earlier proposals to release the water into the sea.

Removal of the melted fuel in the damaged reactors is set to begin next year. There's no plan yet to dispose of the melted fuel, and there won't be until ten years into the removal process.

posted by Kirth Gerson (36 comments total)

But, hey, Tokyo2020, right?

Are there still people in Fukushima living in temp housing? Yeah? That's cool.
posted by snwod at 6:08 AM on December 27, 2019

There are countless plastic waste bags being used to contain millions of tons of radioactive soil and debris. Some of the bags were swept away by the Hagabis typhoon a few months ago.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 6:16 AM on December 27, 2019

It makes sense to relocate the undamaged fuel rods to a safer storage area (and so they could be reprocessed and used for fuel in some other country). But why not leave the 880 tons of molten fuel in place and in simply entomb it like (I presume) was done at Chernobyl? Why move it when you don't have a safer place to put it?
posted by Bee'sWing at 6:25 AM on December 27, 2019

I'm sure the professionals working on this have thought of that.
posted by schmod at 6:31 AM on December 27, 2019 [3 favorites]

A little irony here - if we rewind to before the disaster, and someone commented, "shouldn't this nuclear plant have a failsafe mode for severe earthquakes and tsunamis?", one might have similarly commented "I'm sure the professionals working on this have thought of that".

Professionals are great, but they sometimes fuck up, cut corners, or don't think of things.
posted by Salvor Hardin at 6:41 AM on December 27, 2019 [29 favorites]

I'm sure they have their top men working on it. TOP MEN!
posted by briank at 6:54 AM on December 27, 2019 [7 favorites]

Isn't there always someone on the team who had doubts? Who raised concerns with their supervisor and was shot down?

Professionals do end up cutting corners, but there's also always pressure being put on them do so.
posted by Acid Communist at 6:56 AM on December 27, 2019 [5 favorites]

Once you're talking about a dilution into 1.2 million tons of material, with most of the fuel still confined to very small separate areas anyways, I do kinda have to wonder how the contaminated water compares to seawater, which has things like uranium dissolved in it. If the only exceptional substance in the water is tritium (an activation product, I guess?) and that has a half-life of 12 years I would think at some point in the future it will achieve characteristics similar to seawater with radiation sleeting into it from the sky.
posted by XMLicious at 7:09 AM on December 27, 2019 [3 favorites]

IIRC the main contaminant of concern was plutonium, which has escaped from the cracked reactor vessel. I might be mistaken, it has been some time since I brushed up on this.
posted by mwhybark at 7:38 AM on December 27, 2019

Oh, y'know what, I misread the OP link: it actually says that substances other than tritium can be reduced to non-harmful levels in the water before release, not necessarily that they're currently at non-harmful levels.
posted by XMLicious at 7:44 AM on December 27, 2019 [2 favorites]

Oh, I understand a little bit better now. The cited delay is with respect to the spent fuel rods, that is, the stored fuel rods that were kept in stacks of ever-increasing density in cooling pools at the top of each of the reactor buildings. These rods were the primary focus of concern early on as the worry was that as the water boiled off, the rods might catch fire. The plan discussed in the article implies that TEPCO is deferring removal of these piles until after they get the fuel and slag out of the broken reactors.

As I recall, only one of the reactors used plutonium. Initially, the deployment of continuous waterflow across both the failed pools and reactors had uncontrolled outflow; I would expect the outflow now is the source of the stored water cited in the article. Without looking at the proposed releases, I would guess that probably does not include plutonium-contaminated waste.
posted by mwhybark at 7:47 AM on December 27, 2019 [1 favorite]

These decisions are not just technical. IIRC TEPCO had treated the water that was going to be released to reduce contamination to below some threshold. But the fishing community doesn't want even a hint of radiation escaping for fear of ruining the reputation of their product. And you can't blame the population for being mistrustful.

I want to note, as always, that Fukushima should be taken in context. 16000 people died from the tohoku earthquake and tsunami. 0 of them from the Fukushima meltdown. People only remember the nuclear disaster though, and it's made me cynical.

I give a lot of credit to TEPCo (why not, few others do) for undertaking such a long project to completely clean the site. I wish them luck.
posted by Popular Ethics at 7:53 AM on December 27, 2019 [18 favorites]

Plant owner TEPCO hopes to complete the cleanup in 30 to 40 years.

In modern first world nations any estimated timeframe past 10 years is a paraphrase of "we won't get this done before civilizational collapse"
posted by Rust Moranis at 8:04 AM on December 27, 2019 [9 favorites]

Japan does have the world's oldest continuously operated joint stock corporations, so if we have to have these, we could learn a few thigns from Japan on how to force them to think long term.
posted by ocschwar at 8:29 AM on December 27, 2019 [2 favorites]

I am not a nuclear expert, so can't really have an opinion on that. I will say though that I watched the episode of Dark Tourist where they run around the nuclear disaster site for fun, until the tourists freak out about their Geiger counter readings, and it brought some of the scope of the disaster home to me in a way that reading about it has not, especially the kind of...gap between predicted readings and reality.

I live within the blast zone of a nuclear power plant (we get potassium iodide pills for our house delivered!) and I guess fundamentally I believe that corporations should not be left to their own cleanup devices, it should be a partnership with (good, scientifically-driven) government and environmental groups. So if the government is saying the corporation has to put in more safety measures first, that doesn't seem like a terrible thing on the surface.
posted by warriorqueen at 8:36 AM on December 27, 2019 [1 favorite]

In modern first world nations any estimated timeframe past 10 years is a paraphrase of "we won't get this done before civilizational collapse"

Don't make hasty generalizations; Japan has plenty of experience with big, expensive, long-term engineering projects.

The hugely expensive shinkansen high-speed rail line to Sapporo broke ground in 2005 (to be fair, after many years of planning and budget-wrangling), with an estimated completion date of 2035, and it's currently 5 years of schedule.
posted by teraflop at 8:40 AM on December 27, 2019 [6 favorites]

A 30-40 year project timeline is pretty much an admission of failure without being explicit, probably to help the relevant government officials save face and shareholders (sorry, "stakeholders") keep their money.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 9:57 AM on December 27, 2019 [1 favorite]

your comments are so predictable.

This glib comment is infuriating. One of the great rhetorical tricks of the past decade-plus has been to lump criticism of nuclear power in with anti-vax and anti-GMO folks; even worse, claiming that we need nuclear power to deal with climate change. This shows that the exponential growth model and the idea of technological progress are still taboo across the culture, independent of political alignment. This resistance only ramped up after Fukushima, where the goalposts were moved to make the approximate claim that because Fukushima didn't result in worldwide catastrophe that nuclear power is quite safe.

Among all systems we've come up with, nuclear power plants require the highest degree of organization and stability of society outside of maybe space programs. On this website it's open season on capitalism and how it is internally fascist and how that corrodes democracy, but if you want to discuss how that can be an issue when it intersects with nuclear power, you're just an anti-vaxxer. The desperation regarding climate change on this website is intense (and I even dislike the performative doomer aspects of it) but if you try to apply the collapse we're already seeing in poorer parts of the world to medium term risks with nuclear power in wealthier countries, you're just one of those fraidy-pants people who hates GMO foods because you're afraid of science.
posted by MillMan at 10:47 AM on December 27, 2019 [17 favorites]

As I recall, only one of the reactors used plutonium

AFAIK all standard-ish varieties of nuclear power generation "use" plutonium; creating plutonium is a normal part of the set of reactions going on and plutonium fission is an important source of power for the reactor.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 11:01 AM on December 27, 2019 [1 favorite]

The best robotics minds of the world are in Japan, and the radiation hardening required to get robots to do cleanup work makes the technical problem intractable. That's one reason why a 30-40 year timeline is an admission of failure. The best we can do at this time is cover up or just let the waste spread out into the sea.

And I'd agree with the above comment. We've tried state-run and privately-held nuclear power, and both states and corporations have failed the most basic safety criteria required to operate nuclear technology without terribly polluting disasters that have sickened and killed many, and will continue to do so (particularly Chernobyl). At some point, we need to stop allowing the goalposts to be moved, and to start admitting that maybe this technology comes with major downsides that will cause very serious problems for tens to hundreds of generations to come.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 11:06 AM on December 27, 2019 [8 favorites]

Nuclear meltdowns are dramatic. Slowly kill even more of the populace than nuclear ever did as well as the planet with emissions? A-O-fucking-K.

There are plenty of examples of nuclear being safe and reliable. France gets nearly 3/4 of its electricity from nuclear and has done so for decades. You ever hear a peep out of there for nuclear disasters? The highest they ever got was a level 4 way back in the ‘60s. Most of the accidents since then have been blips. I can’t imagine how much worse the world would be if a first world country like France had been burning all that coal instead of Uranium.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 11:33 AM on December 27, 2019 [4 favorites]

Seriously though, forcing nuclear to account for every emission while letting fossil fuel plants belch out radioactive byproducts in the coal was the master stroke of the fossil fuel industry. The environmental movement being co-opted into being useful idiots for the fossil fuel industry is something to this day that I will never forgive a lot of the environmental groups of the ‘80s for (I’m looking your way Greenpeace you twits).
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 11:38 AM on December 27, 2019 [7 favorites]

I repectfully disagree with the assessment that nuclear power is a failure. While there have been accidents, and people have died (Chernobyl), the safety record of nuclear power is very good relative to other power sources. Millions of people die prematurely and many more made ill by coal power, never mind the hundreds who die in mining or maintaining the plant. It’s environmental impact on wildlife minuscule compared to fossil fuels, wind, and hydro, and with respect to climate change it is blows away other sources of power. France as successfully demonstrated how to safely power practically an entire country with nuclear power

Accidents have the potential to be catastrophic, but accidents so far have been in bad designs. (Chernobyl did not even have a containment building! Fukushima was built adjacent the ocean with emergency generators in pits that could be flooded.)

The waste problem worries many, but the French have solved that, too.

Having said that, nuclear power has several important shortcomings that make it unsuitable as the energy source for electricity of the future. First and foremost, it is very, very expensive, especially for the first kilowatt of new capacity, because the entire plant is required to generate any power.

Cost of first kilowatt of various energy sources (approximate, of course)
Nuclear: $5 billion
Coal: $500 million
Gas: $50 million
Wind: $5 million
Solar: $5,000

Another drawback is the extremely long lead time to even begin construction. Completion of a new plant within a decade from proposal would be considered miraculously fast.

Finally, unfairly in my view, nuclear power has a public relations problem. It is associated in people’s minds with nuclear weapons, and the general public has difficulty assessing risks and understanding the differences between designs. (It’s as if everyone thought blimps were Hindenburg airships.) Nevertheless, I don’t see that changing, which leads in part to the difficulty in licensing these facilities.

So, my opinion is keep existing plants running as long as safely and economically possible, but look to other sources of power to address climate change, at least in this country.
posted by haiku warrior at 11:46 AM on December 27, 2019 [10 favorites]

How France is Disposing of its Nuclear Waste [ BBC 2014]
"Despite advanced schemes in Finland, not a single country worldwide has an operational underground repository."

So France is the single best case example of nuclear waste disposal. Every other single country is still storing waste onsite because of distrust and weak federal governments. I have worked with isotopes and taken radiation safety training, I am not an anti-GMO person with no ability to gauge relative risk. The storage problem is why I am against nuclear -- it is technically possible to do a good job of storing and transporting the waste, but politically impossible in most places. We can barely manage one year budget cycles in the USA, and periodically elect a madman, but are expected to believe that systems can be built that will protect people for thousands of years. Meanwhile, waste keeps piling up onsite awaiting the next disaster.

An unmaintained wind farm or solar site just gathers dust and leaves a bunch of debris around if the operators go bankrupt. Nuclear is not even favored economically anymore by studies in most countries, and can't even be built in the timeframe necessary to make a dent in global warming. Why are people still advocating for nuclear versus large scale solar and wind?
posted by benzenedream at 12:29 PM on December 27, 2019 [19 favorites]

It is associated in people’s minds with nuclear weapons

There are only three countries that are openly pushing hard on development of nuclear plants, in spite of the technology's serious problems: Saudi Arabia, Iran, and North Korea. A fourth, Israel, does so underground, secretly. The motivation isn't nuclear power.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 12:43 PM on December 27, 2019 [6 favorites]

But why not leave the 880 tons of molten fuel in place and in simply entomb it like (I presume) was done at Chernobyl?

Because the radiation seeps into the groundwater, and any sarcophagus around the nuclear waste will degrade and leak long before the waste is safe. Chernobyl has had a new, replacement containment building built around it (with great difficulty because it was too radioactive to build directly over the old reactor sarcophagus - they had to build next to it then roll the building over the reactor on rails). The long term plan is to cut up and safely store the reactor and debris over the next 100 years, using remotely operated cranes built into the new containment building.
posted by EndsOfInvention at 12:50 PM on December 27, 2019 [5 favorites]

Containment is very difficult at Fukushima and what they've done so far is nothing short of amazing: they've literally surrounded it with an ice wall by freezing the groundwater solid 100 feet underground. But obviously a solution of that sort can only be stop-gap since it takes continual resources and attention to maintain it.
posted by sjswitzer at 1:10 PM on December 27, 2019 [7 favorites]

The New Yorker just reported on some of the aftermath in Fukushima and the future of nuclear power and climate change, Is Nuclear Power Worth the Risk?
posted by peeedro at 1:20 PM on December 27, 2019 [1 favorite]

AFAIK all standard-ish varieties of nuclear power generation "use" plutonium; creating plutonium is a normal part of the set of reactions going on and plutonium fission is an important source of power for the reactor.

I am not qualified to evaluate the accuracy of your statement, but wikipedia includes a table of the fuels associated with the plants. Only Unit 3 is showed as being able to use plutonium (shown as MOX). I believe what I was recalling was initial-event concerns that Unit 3 had MOX loaded at the time of the accident. According to the linked info, it did not. I suspect I had conflated plutonium with cesium in recalling what the measurable and reported waste outflow was.

I am sort of relieved to not remember this stuff very well any more.
posted by mwhybark at 1:22 PM on December 27, 2019

The US, USSR, PRC, Australia, Algeria, and many Pacific islands have also been nuked.
There were 100 above ground nuclear tests in Nevada alone. And another 800 underground.

I would think that groundwater contamination would not be as big an issue at Fukushima given that it is right on the coast. Chernobyl would be quite another matter. I'm thinking in terms of polluting drinking water, not polluting the ocean though.
posted by Bee'sWing at 2:26 PM on December 27, 2019

I would think that groundwater contamination would not be as big an issue at Fukushima given that it is right on the coast.

I think perception of risk to the fisheries industries is a major concern, both domestically and internationally. This September, Japan's environment minister Yoshiaki Harada admitted that their ability to store and process the contaminated water was not up to task and that "The only option will be to drain it into the sea and dilute it". These remarks were widely protested by fishermen and he was replaced the next day by Shinjiro Koizumi who apologized to fishermen and called for a nuclear shutdown in his first public remarks.
posted by peeedro at 4:41 PM on December 27, 2019 [2 favorites]

I believe what I was recalling was initial-event concerns that Unit 3 had MOX loaded at the time of the accident. According to the linked info, it did not.

It had some MOX in it: 32 out of 548 fuel assemblies in the reactor (page 66 of this 8MB PDF). It doesn't matter much either way, since there's lots of plutonium in anything but brand new cells. The primary containment kept most of the fuel inside the reactors and only the most volatile/soluble parts (cesium and iodine) got out, so the total radiation release was 1/10 of Chernobyl's.

Of course, that's not a professional opinion. The only professional opinion seems to be that everything is perfectly safe and not to worry about it. So you have to blindly trust them this time, or figure it out yourself, or just blindly reject anything they say. It's not a good set of choices.

The nuclear industry is trying to address the billion-dollar decades-long construction problems with small modular reactors like NuScale's. The thing that costs the most and takes the most time to build is the containment structure and its meters of reinforced concrete, so that's the first thing to go in these new designs. Of course, that's the only thing that's worked to mitigate these meltdown disasters, but the professionals say they're completely safe, like always.
posted by netowl at 5:46 PM on December 27, 2019 [5 favorites]

The cleanup costs of this are paid by the taxpayer and this would be the case for any major nuclear accident anywhere in the world. There is some insurance but the payout caps are laughable compared to the actual costs. The real cost of nuclear - which would include the rare but extremely costly disaster - is so high that it is absolutely unfeasible without the public paying for it. Nuclear is a racket.
posted by patrick54 at 9:59 PM on December 27, 2019 [1 favorite]

Nuclear is indeed a racket. Not only can't insurance companies cover the costs of a nuclear disaster, neither can re-insurance companies, which exist solely to insure the insurance companies! Re-insurance firms must pool their assets into a kind of re-re-insurance operation, in order to cover nuclear disasters.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 11:19 PM on December 27, 2019 [1 favorite]

That reinsurance companies have reinsurance companies (called retrocessionaires) does not necessarily speak to the cost of nuclear disasters. Reinsurance companies retrocede much much smaller risks than that all the time. Insurance spreads risk and re/insurance companies like to spread their risks too.
posted by LizBoBiz at 5:38 AM on December 28, 2019 [1 favorite]

I am not qualified to evaluate the accuracy of your statement, but wikipedia includes a table of the fuels associated with the plants.

All I meant was that in normal power reactors, there's a lot of U238, and in the course of normal operation some of that U238 absorbs neutrons and after some reactions ends up as Pu239, which the reactor happily burns as fuel. Even if you don't put any plutonium in, if the fuel rods have been burning for a while they'll still have some plutonium in them.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 9:38 PM on December 29, 2019 [1 favorite]