Endless Fukushima catastrophe: Many generations’ health at stake
Bio-accumulation of radioactive elements around Fukushima will
devastate many future Japanese generations, while the Pacific Ocean is
also being contaminated by leaking radioactive water. Yet there is still
no good solution from the Japanese government.
REPOSTED FROM:
HERE
As I watched the tsunami power into the reactor complex at Fukushima
on March 11, 2011, I realized the world would never be the same again.
No nuclear reactor can withstand being drowned in a massive wave of
water without catastrophic consequences.
There were three nuclear reactors undergoing fission at the time
while one, unit four, had just been emptied of its radioactive core,
which was now situated in an unprotected cooling pool on the roof of the
building, 100 feet (30 meters) above the ground. As the power supply to
the reactors was disrupted during the earthquake, and the auxiliary
diesel generators in the basements of the reactors failed because they
were flooded, the pumps which supplied up to 1 million gallons of
cooling water to each reactor failed.
Within hours the intensely hot radioactive cores in units one, two
and three started to melt. As they melted, the zirconium metal cladding
on the uranium fuel rods reacted with water to produce hydrogen which
exploded with overwhelming intensity in the buildings of units one, two,
three and four releasing huge amounts of radioactive elements into the
air.
On March 15 alone, it is estimated that 100 quadrillion Becquerels of
cesium, 400 quadrillion of iodine plus 400 quadrillion of inert noble
gases (xenon, krypton and argon) escaped. Over a period of time
two-and-a-half to three times more noble gases were released into the
air than at Chernobyl.
Noble gases are very high energy gamma emitters similar to x-rays,
which penetrate human bodies externally and, when inhaled, are absorbed
from the lungs and stored in fatty tissue exposing nearby organs,
including the gonads, to gamma radiation. Cesium and iodine 131 are also
gamma and beta emitters which enter the body by inhalation and
ingestion. But over 100 other radioactive elements were also released
during the weeks and months of the accident and thousands of people were
exposed to clouds of radiation. The damaged reactors continue to emit
radioactive airborne releases to this day.
Luckily the wind was blowing east across the Pacific in the first
several days, taking 80 percent of the fallout with it – much of which
was deposited in the Pacific Ocean. But around March 15 the wind
changed, blowing to the northwest and large areas of Japan, including
parts of Tokyo became severely contaminated. Approximately 2 million
people are still living in highly contaminated areas in the Fukushima
Prefecture and elsewhere, areas so radioactive that similarly-populated
areas were quickly evacuated by the Soviets after the Chernobyl
accident.
At the time of the Fukushima accident an unprecedented quantity of
highly radioactive water was also released into the Pacific Ocean. But
it hasn’t stopped. TEPCO (Tokyo Electric Power Company) now admits that
300 tons of this water has been leaking into the Pacific every day since
the accident 30 months ago and so far 270,000 tons of water has been
released.
It is becoming apparent that the three molten cores, each weighing
120 to 130 tons have not only melted their way through 6 inches of steel
in the reactor vessels, but they now either sit on concrete floors of
the severely cracked containment buildings or they have melted their way
into the earth itself – this, in nuclear parlance, is called ‘A Melt
Through to China Syndrome’.
Because the reactor complex was built upon an ancient river bed
located at the base of a mountain range, huge quantities of water
flowing down from the mountains (1,000 tons daily) are circulating
around these highly radioactive cores absorbing large concentrations of
radioactive elements.
TEPCO constructed a type of concrete dam near the sea front to
prevent this radioactive water from entering the sea. But the continuous
flow of water built up behind the dam and overflowed into the Pacific
Ocean. Each reactor core contains as much radiation as that released by
1,000 Hiroshima-sized bombs and contains more than 200 different
radioactive elements, which variously last seconds to millions of years.
This handout picture taken by Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) on
August 22, 2013 shows a TEPCO worker checking radiation levelS around a
contaminated water tank at TEPCO’s Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power
plant at Okuma town in Fukushima prefecture. (AFP/TEPCO)
Medical implications
Water in the bay beside Fukushima is highly contaminated with
tritium, which is constantly increasing in concentration and now
measures 4,700 Becquerels per liter – the highest level ever recorded in
seawater. Furthermore a total of 20 to 40 trillion Becquerels of
tritium have now been discharged into the Pacific Ocean –a Becquerel is
one disintegration of radiation per second. Tritium is radioactive
hydrogen, H3. It combines with oxygen to form tritiated water HTO, which
is very dangerous. It emits an electron, or beta particle which, if
lodged in the body, is very energetic.
Tritium combines within the DNA molecule inducing mutations. In
numerous animal experiments tritium causes birth defects, cancers of
various organs including brain and ovaries, and it induces testicular
atrophy and mental retardation at surprisingly low doses. Tritium is
organically taken up in food and is concentrated in fish, vegetables,
and other food groups, and it remains radioactive for over 120 years.
Ingestion of contaminated food causes 10 percent to combine in the human
body where it can remain for many years continuously irradiating cells.
One of the main elements is cesium, a potassium mimicker, which
concentrates in the heart, endocrine organs and muscles where it can
induce cardiac irregularities, heart attacks, diabetes, hypothyroidism
or thyroid cancer and a very malignant muscle cancer called
rhabdomyosarcoma. Cesium remains radioactive for 300 years and
concentrates in the food chain.
Covers are installed for a spent fuel removal operation at Japan’s
Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant’s unit 4 reactor building (R), in Okuma
town in Fukushima prefecture on June 12, 2013. (AFP Photo)
Another very dangerous element is strontium 90, which also is
poisonous for 300 years. Analogous to calcium, it concentrates in grass
and milk, then relocates into bones, teeth and breast milk where it can
cause bone cancer, leukemia or breast cancer.
Amongst the many other radioactive elements which are almost
certainly escaping into the sea is plutonium which lasts for 240,000
years and is one of the most potent carcinogens known, such that a
millionth of a gram can cause cancer. Each reactor core contains 500lbs
of plutonium, but Reactor 3 contains even more, because it also
contained plutonium/uranium fuel rods which were placed inside the core
as an experiment.
As plutonium resembles iron in the body, it induces cancers in the
lung if inhaled, and also cancers in the liver, bone, testicle and
ovary. As an iron analogue, it readily crosses the placenta causing
severe birth deformities similar to those produced by the drug
thalidomide. All radioactive elements which irradiate the reproductive
organs will induce genetic mutations in the sperm and eggs, thereby
increasing the incidence of genetic diseases over future generations
such as diabetes, cystic fibrosis, hemophilia, hemochromatosis and 6000
others.
These are only several of over 100 deadly radioactive poisons
polluting the Pacific Ocean and the air, each of which has its own
pathway in the food chain and the human body. Radioactive elements are
tasteless, odorless and invisible, and it takes many years for cancers
and other radiation-related diseases to manifest – five to 80 years for
most cancers.
Children are 10 to 20 times more sensitive to the carcinogenic
effects of radiation than adults, fetuses are thousands of times more
so. One x-ray to the pregnant abdomen doubles the likelihood of leukemia
in the baby. Females are also more sensitive than men at all ages.
Radiation is cumulative, there is no safe dose and each dose received by
a person adds to the risk of developing cancer.
Of great concern is the fact that 18 cases of childhood thyroid
cancer in children under the age of 18 have already been diagnosed and
25 more are suspected in Fukushima. This is a remarkably short
incubation time for cancer, indicating that these children almost
certainly received a very high dose of iodine 131 plus other
carcinogenic radioactive elements that were and are still being inhaled
and ingested.
Thyroid cancer in Chernobyl victims did not appear for four years.
Thyroid cancer is rarely found in young children. Iodine 131 is
radioactive for 100 days, and is a potent carcinogen. Iodine 129 on the
other hand lasts millions of years. Over 350,000 children still live and
go to school in highly radioactive areas, and as juvenile thyroid
cancers are arising, so the number of leukemia cases will start to
increase about two years from now, with solid cancers of various organs
diagnosed about 11 years later. These will increase in frequency for the
next 70 -80 years.
Food in the contaminated zone will remain radioactive for hundreds of
years because it will continue to bio-accumulate radioactive elements
from the soil, thus ensuring that an increased incidence of cancer will
devastate many future Japanese generations.
Medical doctors in Japan are reporting that they have been ordered by
their superiors not to tell the patients that their problems are
radiation related.
Water and the Pacific Ocean
Now back to the reactor complex. TEPCO is still pumping hundreds of
tons of salt water over molten reactor cores daily as another 1,000 tons
of underground water also flows through the damaged reactors. In order
to try and control this frightening situation, TEPCO is pumping 300 to
400 tons of this highly contaminated water on a daily basis into 1,060
huge holding tanks adjacent to the reactor complex. These tanks now
contain 350,000 tons of water and more tanks are being added each week
to accommodate this endless flow of water.
TEPCO originally attempted to filter this water using an Advanced
Liquid Processing System to remove some of the radioactive contaminants,
but one of its tanks corroded and it was closed down in June this year.
The tanks have been hastily constructed to last five years, some have
rubber seams, others have metal bolts which are corroding and very few
are securely welded. Recently, workers discovered that the highly
radioactive water is leaking and contaminating the tank site. Three
hundred tons of water escaped from a tank measuring 100 millisieverts,
or 10 rems, per hour and some of this water had also drained into the
sea. A nuclear worker is allowed a yearly exposure of 5 rems. Because of
this finding the present accident level was raised from 1 to 3, the
original accident being labeled 7 – equivalent to Chernobyl, and the
worst possible case.
It is suspected that many more tanks are leaking. Until recently
TEPCO had only two men patrolling 1,060 tanks twice a day armed with
inadequate Geiger counters. When new instruments were provided,
radiation of 1,800 millisieverts per hour, or 180 rems, was discovered
in leaked water at another tank, while several days later a reading
measuring 2,200 millsieverts, or 220 rems, per hour was discovered! This
was estimated to be mostly beta radiation, which would not penetrate
the clothing of the workers. However high levels of gamma are radiating
continually from the tanks and gamma, like x-rays goes right through a
human body unimpeded.
The LD 50, a dose at which half an exposed population dies, is 250
rems! Not only are these workers in serious jeopardy, but TEPCO is fast
running out of people to manage this disaster which could continue for
100 years or more. TEPCO said tritium levels in water taken from a well
close to a number of storage tanks holding irradiated water rose to
64,000 becquerels per liter on Tuesday September 10, from 4,200
becquerels/liter at the same location on Sunday.
They are also running out of room to accommodate more tanks, the
water keeps coming, and if there is another earthquake measuring 6 or
above on the Richter scale, the plastic piping connecting the tanks and
the tanks themselves could shatter releasing their contents into the
ocean. If an earthquake does not eventuate, what will the Japanese do
with this water? Obviously it is going to have to be discharged into the
Pacific Ocean. However Prime Minister Abe recently announced that the
government will spend $320 million dollars to construct a wall of ice
0.9 miles (1.45km) in length and 100 feet deep behind and around the
complex to prevent the mountain aquifer from rushing in to engulf the
damaged cores.
Arnie Gundersen, a nuclear engineer
estimates that
trying to clean the site and control the situation would cost at the
minimum half a trillion dollars, and he says that the ice wall may not
even be deep enough to block the water.
Furthermore maintaining the ice wall would require huge amounts of
electricity, presumably to be generated by coal as the reactors will all
be closed, which will add to global warming and obviously the ice will
melt should there be a power outage. Not a good solution as the ice must
remain intact for over 100 years. The government also plans to spend
$150 million attempting to remove the radioactive elements from the
water so they can be discharged into the sea, a Sisyphean task,
virtually impossible to conduct successfully.
But there are other problems which defy solution. The whole reactor
site sits on sodden ground, which has now become unstable, muddy and
possibly liquefied. The site itself experiences many minor earthquakes
each day, but should a quake greater than 6 or 7 on the Richter scale
occur, it is likely that one or several of the buildings could collapse
with absolutely disastrous consequences.
To be continued…
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