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Pumping to Begin at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station Ground Water Bypass Plan
On April 4, the
Fukushima Prefecture Fisheries Cooperative Federation (FPFCF) secured a
written response from TEPCO promising strict observance of effluent
standards in its plans to divert ground water from the mountain side
before it reaches the nuclear plant as a contamination countermeasure
at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station. The FPFCF made a formal
decision to accept the response. On April 9, pumping began at special
purpose wells. On April 17, however, tritium was detected in excess of
standards in water that had been drawn from one of the wells on April
15. Water drawn on April 18 and 22 had returned to within standards,
and thus pumping from that well was resumed on April 24. Release of
water into the ocean was begun on May 21.
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A Mistake or an Intentional Act? Highly Contaminated Water Misrouted
On April 11, the water level failed to rise
at a processing building to which contaminated water from a turbine
building at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station was being
temporarily routed, but instead was falling. An investigation was
initiated on April 12 and on April 13 it was discovered that temporary
pumps that had been installed in June 2011 as an emergency measure for
transferring contaminated water were running, and were thus stopped. On
April 14, TEPCO announced that 203 tons of contaminated water had been
mistakenly routed to an incineration building. The pump had been
actuated by hand, possibly deliberately, but on May 2, TEPCO announced
that there was a strong likelihood that it had been human error as a
result of mistaking the pump switches for air conditioning equipment
switches. Other incidents due to human error have occurred frequently
at this nuclear plant, and there continue to be cases which could be
either accidental or deliberate.
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Hakodate City Files Suit to Halt Construction of Ohma Nuclear Power Station
The Ohma Nuclear Power Station (ABWR,
1,383 MW) being built in Ohma Town, Aomori Prefecture by the Electric
Power Development Co. was planned for plutonium-thermal generation as
the world’s first commercial nuclear power plant to have all of its
reactors equipped to handle MOX fuel. Hakodate in Hokkaido is located
just across the Tsugaru Strait from the Ohma Nuclear Power Station, a
mere 23 km away. Because the “right to life” of the municipality would
be threatened by the effects of an accident at the Ohma Nuclear Power
Station, if one were to occur, on April 3, Hakodate City filed a
lawsuit in the Tokyo District Court seeking to halt construction of the
Ohma Nuclear Power Station, the first time a municipality in Japan has
undertaken such a suit.
A ferry connects Hakodate and Ohma, taking an hour
and thirty minutes to make the journey, and many of Ohma Town’s
citizens travel regularly to Hakodate, which has large hospitals and
commercial facilities and other urban functions, for medical care or
shopping for daily necessities. In this way, Hakodate and Ohma Town
have historically had strong economic and cultural ties.
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Vitrified Residue Returns Shipment Arrives from the UK
Vitrified high-level radioactive waste being returned to Japan
from the UK, where it had been sent for reprocessing, has arrived in
Rokkasho Village, Aomori Prefecture, where it has been transferred to a
storage facility belonging to Japan Nuclear Fuel Ltd. Returns of
nuclear waste entrusted to France for reprocessing have ended, but this
is the fifth shipment from the UK. The Pacific Grebe departed from the
British port of Barrow-in-Furness on February 14, traveled via the Cape
of Good Hope and the southwestern Pacific, and arrived at the port of
Mutsu-Ogawara on April 22. Two of the transport flasks were unloaded on
April 22 and the remaining three on April 23, with the ship departing
on the same day, immediately after unloading.
Between ten and twenty people gathered early on the
morning of April 22 for a protest rally, but their voices were drowned
out occasionally by roars from fighter jets circling on practice runs
above the adjacent Amagamori firing range. About 30 people participated
in a protest in front of the Aomori Prefectural Government offices.
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Fukushima Daiichi Decommissioning & Decontamination Engineering Company Inaugurated
On April 1, TEPCO established the Fukushima Daiichi Decommissioning
& Decontamination (D&D) Engineering Company as an internal
entity. The company is attempting to create underground frozen walls as
a means of solving the problem of water contamination from the
Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station. On April 24, the company
announced that it had confirmed the efficacy of frozen soil in
small-scale experiments conducted in March through April. The Nuclear
Regulation Authority (NRA) says there are safety issues with this, and
is not satisfied with TEPCO’s explanation regarding the necessity for
underground frozen walls. On May 26, the NRA recognized a partial start
to the construction of the walls in June.
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Working Group Compiling a Report on Locations for High-Level Waste Processing Facilities
The radioactive wastes
working group established by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and
Industry’s Advisory Committee on Natural Resources and Energy, produced
an interim report on April 30 on the problem of high-level radioactive
waste disposal. A formal decision was announced on May 23
after revision of the report. Hideyuki Ban, Co-director of CNIC, who is
a member of the working group, called for continued deliberation on the
basis of the large number of public comments the issue had drawn, but
he was overruled and the revision of the report was entrusted to the
chairman.
The interim report said that making a necessary
thorough review of measures taken so far had been considered, but it
rejected the proposed “provisional storage for a period of several tens
of years to several hundreds of years” put forth by the Science Council
of Japan in September 2012, and the main thrust of the report is
reconfirmation of the policy of deep geological disposal.
Furthermore, regarding the disposal site selection
process, the interim report says, “The national government must explain
the characteristics of the geological environment of the candidate
regions from a scientific standpoint, indicating areas which are more
highly scientifically suitable, and seek to promote understanding of
the site selection.
A conference of the concerned ministers on December
17 of last year determined that the national government should indicate
prospective sites based on scientific studies, and then take a leading
role in efforts to gain residents’ understanding of the important
points and making proposals to a number of regions. It recommended
choosing disposal sites through public solicitation of candidate sites,
but met with strong criticism from the pro-nuclear faction because
little progress was apparent. However, if the government makes
proposals without first achieving agreement on nuclear energy policy,
the result will only be chaos among the regions and the problem will
remain unsolved. It will be necessary first to ascertain anti-nuclear
sentiment in order to achieve the other proposal by the Science Council
of Japan for “total volume management.”
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