AN ALARM lets off a shrill beep as a dosimeter on the bus hits 1500 microsieverts of radiation. “Do not open the windows,” an official warns. We are inside the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, driving by one of the three reactors that went into meltdown following the earthquake and tsunami that struck north-eastern Japan on 11 March 2011.
The place is a mess, with mangled containers and vehicles scattered around crumbling buildings – but the fact that I’m even here is testament to the now relative safety of the plant. However, much remains to be done and the clean-up operation is starting to look never-ending.
The group I’m with is ushered into a quake-proof building, the plant’s nerve centre since the disaster, by staff from the Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco), the plant’s operator. Inside, the only sign of the post-disaster panic and stabilisation operations, undertaken by 3000 workers a day, is a line of unmade bunk beds, indicating that the clean-up operation is still a round-the-clock affair.
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The walls are decorated with messages of encouragement to embattled workers from school children. “We’re rooting for you,” reads one, a bright red heart drawn above. Many of the messages were penned during more ominous times, when tens of thousands of residents living near the plant were evacuated from their homes, and plant workers struggled to find fresh water to cool the damaged containment vessels housing the uranium.
Water shortages are no longer the problem – quite the opposite in fact. Today, the main issue is what to do with the coolant water leaking from the cracked vessels. This is exacerbated by the 400 tonnes of groundwater that is flooding into the basements of the damaged reactor buildings every day. We saw the water – now dangerously radioactive – being drained out of the reactors for storage in 11-metre high makeshift steel tanks. So far, 900 tanks have been bolted together, providing temporary storage for some 300,000 tonnes of water. But more tanks and more storage space are needed fast. The issue is and must be resolved before decommissioning can begin, said Juan Carlos Lentijo of the International Atomic Energy Agency, in a statement after a visit to the site in April.
“Hundreds of tonnes of groundwater flood into the basements of the reactor buildings every day”
There is a short-term solution, which a Tepco official points out – an expanse of forest beyond the perimeter of the site is being cut down to accommodate more tanks. The capacity, he says, will be increased by 400,000 tonnes by mid-2015. But by that time, the older tanks will have reached their two-year lifespan and will be at risk of leaking, points out Hideyuki Ban of the in Tokyo.
To deal with the groundwater problem, Tepco has dug a dozen 30-metre-deep wells into the nearby hillside to lower the water table around the reactor buildings and stem the flow. “It’s very much a case of shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted,” says Ban.
The hope is that they should soon be able to start cleaning the contaminated water, using a piece of kit called an advanced liquid processing system (ALPS). Tests have shown it can filter out 62 radioactive nuclides that have yet to decay away to densities below the official limit, Tepco claims. A crucial exception is tritium, a radioactive isotope of hydrogen with a half-life of 12 years. Levels of tritium are up to 85 times the legal limit even after being filtered by ALPS, says Tepco. Although tritium is about 1000 times less radioactive than other long-lived isotopes such as caesium-137 and casesium-134, it is still a radiation hazard when inhaled or ingested.
One idea that has been floated by Tepco is to pump the filtered water into the sea – even with the elevated levels of tritium – but before that can happen, the company will need to convince a distrusting local fisheries industry and other concerned groups that it is safe to do this. Some groups claim that contaminated water has already been released into the ocean. If they don’t get the go-ahead, says Ban, “the water will have to be stored in more tanks. Until there is no more room, that is.”
Tepco has said it will soon begin decommissioning the damaged reactors, and expects the operation to take between 30 and 40 years. This will include the three units that melted down, and one – unit 4 – that had its roof damaged by an explosion while out of operation. The first stage is scheduled to start in November, says plant superintendent Takeshi Takahashi, with the removal of more than 98,000 fuel rods from unit 4’s spent fuel pool. Once this gets under way, the entire fuel cache from unit 4 should be moved to a larger pool 50 metres inland from unit 4 within a year.
However, others are sceptical. “That’s pure lip service,” says Kaori Suzuki of a non-profit group in Iwaki that offers thyroid cancer monitoring. “I was told by a Tepco Daiichi plant official that they would be lucky to complete the process within 10 years.”
At the end of my four-hour visit, my dosimeter reads 37 microsieverts. It’s only a tiny amount – far below the 50-millisievert limit that nuclear plant workers are allowed to receive per year (see “From the frontline: The workers’ take“) – but I don’t care: I’m glad to be leaving.
From the frontline: The workers’ take
As well as running out of space to store the ever-increasing amount of contaminated water at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant (see main story), there are worries about a lack of people power.
“There is such a shortage of workers that they’ll try anything to draw people in,” says one former Daiichi employee who wished to remain anonymous, referring to a highway sign offering a 20,000 yen ($200) daily bonus to work at the site.
Atsushi Nakata, who recently quit his job at the plant to undertake decontamination work in the surrounding towns, says that finding people with the requisite skills has long been a headache for the plant operators. “Earlier on there were skilled workers, but they have been forced to retire after reaching their permitted accumulative dose limit,” he says. What’s more, there are plenty of other construction-related jobs available in the quake and tsunami-devastated region, Nakata adds. The daily rate for his current job is almost identical to what he was earning inside the plant. “For many people, it’s a no brainer.”
“If those well acquainted with the work should continue to quit, this could lead to a huge problem,” says another former Daiichi employee. “It does not help that Tepco is a nuclear power plant operator, not a power plant fixer.”
However, a contractor working at the plant says he has no impression that there is a shortage of staff. “It’s certainly not easy, but I don’t feel I am being unnecessarily burdened with work,” he says. And a Tepco employee told żěè¶ĚĘÓƵ that the reports of labour shortages at the nuclear plant are “grossly exaggerated”.
This article appeared in print under the headline “Radioactive water, water everywhere”
