Nuclear Coma in “Shi No Machi":
A Zone of No Return
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“With firm geological foundations and major earthquakes rare, Fukushima is a safe and secure place to the businesses.”
-The government of Fukushima Prefecture’s website slogan before the March 11, 2011 nuclear accident. September 10, 2011
“A Town of Death- Shi No Machi”
The Economy, Trade, and Industry minister of Japan, Mr. Yoshio Hachiro who was charged to handle one of the world’s largest nuclear energy complex accident at the Fukushima site, told the ultimate truth to the world, and lost his job.
by Hayrettin KILIÇ
(Image source-For Fairly use:
AP Photo/Wally Santana)
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On March 11, 2011, about 100 kilometers away from the Fukushima site, a major rupture took place and propagated along the segments of the ocean floor all the way to Kamaishi Bay to trigger an earthquake of magnitude 9.0. Two minutes of tremendous ground shaking crippled 4 of the 6 nuclear reactors as well as auxiliary backup systems at the Daiichi nuclear complex, one of the world largest. The tsunami created by the earthquake reached to 40 meters high in some areas, swept eastern shores of Japan and destroyed one of the largest Kamaishi Barriers, which was anchored to the sea floor 63 meters down, 20 meters thick, and rising 8 meters above the sea level. Within a couple of minutes, the Daiichi Power Plant was disconnected from its life support of cooling water, and slipped into a Nuclear Coma forever.
In the frantic days after the accident, a huge quantity/dose of radiation (10,000 milli Sievert /hour) entered into the atmosphere as a result of hydrogen explosions and fires, contaminating the primary food chain and everything humans came in contact with. The permissible radiation dose for person is 50-100 mili Sievert/YEAR. The Japanese government and the owner of the power plant TEPCO released copious amounts of crude and conflicting data about every aspect of the accident. All monitoring of radioactive fallout, including daily environmental radiation measurements which determine the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale (INES) was patchy. In the meantime, the seismological uncertainties associated with the constant aftershocks not only lowered the morale of heroic workers at the Fukushima site, but also in all the other communities living near nuclear facilities in Japan.
Since the accident at Fukushima Daiichi, communities throughout Japan have refused to let nuclear power plants resume production until the triple crisis; earthquake, tsunami and nuclear accident measures are completed. In Japan, local governments have the ability to block nuclear facility restarts after they shut down for even routine maintenance.
In fact, on May 6, the Japanese government ordered the other 34 nuclear reactors, all of which are built on the highest sensible earthquake coastal areas, to seize electrical production, leaving only about 25 percent of Japan’s nuclear reactors operating. In the meantime, IAEA kept a low profile about the severity and the scale (INES) of the accident, waiting for instruction from the Japanese government, just as they have done in past nuclear accidents.
Initially, the fallout was determined to be level 4 by Japan’s Nuclear and Safety Agency and by April 12, 2011 was upgraded to level 7. IAEA immediately followed the Japanese authority’s decision and declared the Fukushima accident the same level as Chernobyl. However, most experts believe that power outages hampered the measurements and made it impossible to have a detailed assessment of the radiation release during the first ten days.
Further, considering the size of the reactors and the volume of the fresh and waste fuel involved in the Fukushima accident, especially a plutonium and uranium mixture fuel (MOX) that is also melted in unit 3, some experts believe that Fukuhima accidents must be rated seven plus on INES scale. The radioactive clouds that were injected into the atmosphere during the 3 Hydrogen explosions and subsequent fires have spread across the northeastern inland region of Japan, and followed the predicted easterly path over the Pacific Ocean.
A week after the accident, low levels of radiation reached the northwestern coast of the USA and was detected at the Pacific Northwest National Lab of Oregon, and two weeks later in it was also detected Europe as well. If prevailing winds blew to the south of Dai-ichi, 7.7 million people along the path and more than 30 million in the Tokyo region, living in 150 kilometer distance would have been exposed to a high level of radiation. Unlike TMI, and Chernobyl, during the first a few weeks, millions of gallons of contaminated water were discharged into sea.
By the month of July 2011 researchers picked up low levels of radiation in sea water more than 600 kilometers from the Dai-ichi site. People are not asking what went wrong at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima anymore; instead they are questioning what is wrong with the nuclear reactors. U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) secretary Stephen Chiu testified before the congressional committees and admitted that, (presented official reports based on official records) identifying 14 “near misses” accidents in USA power plants in 2010 alone. According to latest reports of the Pew Research Center in Washington D.C., U.S., public support for a possible increased use of nuclear power has dropped to 39% with 52% of the people opposed to it. In comparison, the center’s poll found 47% were for nuclear power before the Fukushima accident.
In Europe, nuclear safety regulators announced new criteria for safety reviews for Europe’s 143 nuclear reactors, and asked operators to conduct stress tests against all possible natural disasters. As a result of diminishing public confidence, Germany shut down its seven unsafe reactors immediately after the Fukushima accident, and finally a great sense of political urgency and public pressure propelled German policy makers to make the historical decision to abandon nuclear power by 2022. Switzerland’s government said that it will close its five nuclear reactors in the next two decades. The Italian government introduced a one year moratorium on new reactor’s proposals, halting possibility of build four new nuclear reactors. Further, On April 20, 2011 Italian Senate approved a new amendment which extends the moratorium indefinitely. China suspended construction of 26 reactors temporarily and are reconsidering expansion plans of building 50 more reactors.
On September 18, 2011 German corporation Siemens announced that, they will no longer build or finance nuclear power plants in Germany or elsewhere. The Fukushima accident has clearly shredded worldwide public confidence in atomic energy, and validated the concerns and mistrust of those environmentalists and anti-nukes activists who oppose nuclear power in every shape and form. Environmentalists point out that it is an urgent worldwide requirement to reexamine efficiencies of civil and technological emergency measures in all operational, civilian and military nuclear power plants built in the last 6o years.
The accident of Fukushima also took the nuclear industry and policy makers by surprise, and once again proved that with the existing knowledge and the technology available today, every possible emergency system in nuclear power plants is at risk of damage from natural disasters. The last 50 years, policy makers in Japan created a nation that was heavily addicted to energy consumption in every step of their daily life. However, TMI, Chernobyl, and Fukushima collectively serve as an exhibit A for the inherently risky energy source of nuclear power which energized all glorious lighting in Tokyo and such cities. The fate of the nuclear energy in Japan hangs in two different fronts first, isolation of Fukushima plant and prevention of further radioactive release, second close inspection and eliminating any other reactors that are vulnerable to natural disasters like Fukushima. The Fukushima accidents also showed that successive rupturing of segments, ripping hundreds of kilometers of fault lines parallel to the coastal areas of eastern Japan were the sources of the earthquake.
Therefore the Akkuyu site in Turkey, which is near to a major fault line in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea, may be subject to the propagation of ruptures creating an unprecedented scale of tsunami, such as what happened in Japan. Even if a major point-source earthquake takes place hundreds of kilometers away in Mediterranean Sea, it may indeed overwhelm the Akkuyu site in Turkey.
It cannot be denied that, after the Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima accidents, the immense complex system of nuclear power plants are often more unpredictable than their designed parameters. They produced events with global ramifications, and they cannot withstand substantial natural trauma. They are sensitive to the smallest unpredicted beyond-design changes and abnormalities during their operation. It is a complicated system which exhibits high interactive technological complexities. Both in the number and degree of system inter-relationships among its components and tight coupling, meaning that initial failures can rapidly bring down other parts of the system. In fact, a small amount of water that leaked into the instrumentation panel in TMI’s reactor caused malfunction and prevented operators to see an open-stack valve in secondary cooling system, which triggered an escalating chain of events resulting loss of coolant and partial meltdown. The 6 reactors at the Fukushima complex are approximately 100 times more powerful (7476 MW maximum capacity) than the one in the unit- number 4 of the Chernobyl power plant, which exploded in 1986 due to equipment- components malfunction and a major human operator error. A major problem with a nuclear power plant, which houses multiple numbers of reactors, is that a major accident in one of the reactors or in the storage waste tank may cripple normal operations at other reactors. The Fukushima accident captivated all nations, especially Turkey, where nuclear technology remains largely unknown. However, media’s invaluable feedback and real time coverage enabled Turkish people to learn more about the merits of nuclear energy, and finally attain a richer understanding of this particular energy source which is being still portrayed as a source of secure and limitless energy.
Despite the confusing claims by TEPCO, IAEA, Turkish pro-nuclear scientists, and the Japanese government, all independent experts agreed that significant, catastrophic amounts of radioisotopes have been released into the atmosphere and sea during the hydrogen explosions from the Fukushima plant. Including, but not limited to, the radioactive gases such as Iodine, Xenon, Cesium, as well as Strontium. And perhaps plutonium, Uranium, terriliuim particles in oxide forms. Unit number 1 and 2 contained more than 100 tons of Uranium fuel, and unit number 3 was loaded with fresh nuclear fuel of uranium and plutonium mixture called MOX. In addition each reactor building contained huge amounts of waste fuel stored in cooling pools, more than 300,000 tons which is 1 million times more radioactive than fresh fuel.
In recent years, there has been the introduction of new and exciting so called, third-plus generation nuclear power plant designs; these advanced nuclear reactor designs have captivated the attention of investors and policy makers in Turkey. Despite the continuing 25 year cleanup efforts in Chernobyl, radioactive releases still lingering from Fukushima, and many major industrial countries abandoning nuclear energy, the Turkish government is still aggressively pursuing the construction of nuclear reactors. This is indeed a troubling development in the Middle East. Ironically, the Russian nuclear industry and Turkish policy makers ask Turkish people to imagine an untested Russian designed VVER-1200 reactor which will be built at Akkuyyu site, from which no radiation can escape. In the light of Fukisihima accident, Turkish authorities should realize that, the idea of a nuclear device with new complex structural properties that can withstand the unexpected force of nature is still elusive.
The echoes of TMI, Chernobyl and Fukushima accidents are an ultimate proof of our understanding of how natural forces and technological systems interact in real time, much different than computer simulations in virtual time. It reflects our inability to control them during major natural disasters. The Fukushima accident shows one more time that management of complex networks in nuclear power plants becomes impossible. Unfortunately, a handful of Turkish pro-nuclear scientists have been complicit in distorting TMI and Chernobyl facts and have been misleading the public for 30 years.
During the first week of the Fukushima accident, they tried to give misleading impressions saying that there is no need to worry about a complete meltdown; Fukushima is not the same as the Chernobyl accident, and have collectively conveyed unconvincing, defensive and selective information since the onset of the accident. In fact, during the Hydrogen explosions in Fukushima, a prominent Turkish nuclear physicist, at national TV –TRT described the Hydrogen explosions as an insignificant event. He stated that “it is just the Hydrogen gas; as a matter of fact that 18% of the atmosphere is made of Hydrogen gas”. However, in June of 2011, the Japanese government and IAEA acknowledged that most of the radioactive isotopes, including Cesium-137, Strontium-90 were injected into the atmosphere during the Hydrogen explosions, which amounts (equivalent) to 17% of the release from Chernobyl, and the total radiation released into environment during the first 3 months is 770.000 Tera Becquerel, twice the amount of early estimates of Japanese government.
Turkish Prime Minister Mr.Tayip Erdogan and his government have failed to realize the difference between explosions in a nuclear power plant and a propane gas tank in a kitchen. Unlike propane tanks or air plane accidents, nuclear reactors represent hidden technological chaos that ensues during a serious accident and evolves over time into global socio-economic catastrophes as we have seen happen in Japan. Complete meltdown of three reactors at the Fukushima site created a zone of no return, more than 100,000 people lost their houses/businesses and millions of people in the Northeast of Japan continue to suffer on a day to day basis in every aspect of their life.
And finally, a sobering reminder to energy policy makers in Turkey that nuclear reactors are economically risky energy sources. On August 9, 2011 TEPCO announced a net loss of $7.4 Billion US dollars in the first quarter of 2011-12 financial years.
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H.Kiliç, October 9, 2011
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