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More than a year and a half since the nuclear crisis, much of Japan’s post-Fukushima cleanup remains primitive, slapdash and bereft of the cleanup methods lauded by government scientists as effective in removing harmful radioactive cesium from the environment.

Recent reports in the local media of cleanup crews dumping contaminated soil and leaves into rivers has focused attention on the sloppiness of the cleanup.

Also worrying, industry experts say, are cleanup methods used by the construction companies that create loose contamination that can become airborne or enter the water.

Some radioactive contaminants at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation will threaten the Columbia River for thousands of years, a new analysis projects, despite the multibillion-dollar cleanup efforts by the federal government.

The U.S. Department of Energy projections come from a new analysis of how best to clean up leaking storage tanks and manage waste at Hanford, a former nuclear weapons production site on 586 square miles next to the Columbia in southeastern Washington.

Oregon officials say the results, including contamination projections for the next 10,000 years, indicate the federal government needs to clean up more of the waste that has already leaked and spilled at Hanford instead of capping and leaving it, a less-expensive alternative.

Futaba is a modern-day ghost town — not a boomtown gone bust, not even entirely a victim of the devastating earthquake and tsunami that leveled other parts of Japan’s northeast coast.

Its traditional wooden homes have begun to sag and collapse since they were abandoned in March by residents fleeing the nuclear plant on the edge of town that began spiraling toward disaster. Roofs possibly damaged by the earth’s shaking have let rain seep in, starting the rot that is eating at the houses from the inside.

The roadway arch at the entrance to the empty town almost seems a taunt. It reads: “Nuclear energy: a correct understanding brings a prosperous lifestyle.”

LOS ALAMOS, N.M. (AP) — Pickup trucks believed present at the world's first nuclear bomb test, coke and whiskey bottles, a calendar and a toothbrush are just a few of the items unearthed by a cleanup of one of Los Alamos National Laboratory's original toxic dump sites, where the detritus of the 1940s Manhattan Project was strewn through some of northern New Mexico's most scenic mesas and canyons.More important, workers also extracted 43,000 cubic yards of radioactive debris and toxic soil — all beneath highly specialized containment domes — from what is known as Area B, just across the street from a strip of local businesses, and just more than a mile from downtown Los Alamos.The three-year, $212 million excavation project on the six-acre site was completed last month, and lab officials boast that environmental conditions there will soon be suitable for residential development.That's the good news.

But cleaning up the greater 40-square mile lab complex, situated 25 miles northwest of Santa Fe at the top of a series of canyons whose storm waters run into the Rio Grande, is far from complete. And this summer's massive Las Conchas fire that singed lab property heightened environmental and safety fears associated with more than 70 years of nuclear production and experiments."I think every time that there is some natural event that has ... the potential for disturbing radioactive sources, everybody becomes very interested in what is going on," said Ralph Phelps, chairman of the Northern New Mexico Citizens Advisory Board.Although lab officials downplayed the fire danger at the time, Phelps said the waste and contaminated buildings at the 63-acre site known as Area G definitely pose a safety threat to northern New Mexico.

As a result, Gov. Susana Martinez and the Citizens Advisory Board have increased pressure on the National Nuclear Safety Administration, which runs the lab for the Department of Energy, to accelerate removal of thousands of barrels of plutonium-tainted waste stored in Area G, the lab's last active dump site. Those barrels gained national focus when the state's largest ever wildfire forced a nearly weeklong evacuation of both the lab and the entire town of Los Alamos."Fire up here is something that the folks have been through," Phelps said. "... If a fire were to reach that that area and heat that stuff up and rupture the drums, there is the potential that some of that could go airborne."Martinez sent lab officials a letter asking that they reprioritize their cleanup plans, which are laid out in a consent order with the state requiring remediation of 90 percent of toxic waste on lab property by 2015 at a cost of some $2 billion.

As part of the biggest, costliest environmental cleanup project in the nation's history - disposing of 53 million gallons of radioactive waste at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington state - one thing was supposed to be sure: Waste stored in the sturdy, double-wall steel tanks that hold part of the toxic ooze wasn't going anywhere. But that reassurance has been thrown into question with the discovery of a 3-foot-long piece of radioactive material between the inner and outer steel walls of one of the storage tanks, prompting new worries at the troubled cleanup site. "We're taking it seriously, and we're doing an investigation so we can better understand what it is," Department of Energy spokeswoman Lori Gamache said

The discovery marks the first time material has been found outside the inner wall of one of the site's 28 double-shell tanks, thought to be relatively secure interim storage for the radioactive material generated when Hanford was one of the nation's major atomic production facilities. It opened in 1943 and began a gradual shutdown in 1964. Cleanup started in 1989. The $12.2-billion cleanup project eventually aims to turn most of the waste stored at Hanford into glass rods at a high-tech vitrification plant scheduled to be operational in 2019, assuming the formidable design and engineering hurdles can be overcome. In the meantime, plant engineers have been gathering waste stored in the facility's 149 aging, leaky single-wall storage tanks and redepositing them in the double0-shell tanks for safekeeping. Over the years, more than 1 million gallons of waste has leaked out of 67 single-wall tanks into the surrounding soil.

"There's been this presumption that the double-shell tanks at least are sound and won't fail, and they'll be there for us," said Tom Carpenter of the advocacy group Hanford Challenge. Several days ago the group obtained a memo from the cleanup site detailing discovery of the mysterious substance. "This changes everything. It is alarming that there is now solid evidence that Hanford double-shell has leaked," Carpenter said in a separate statement on the discovery. The 42-year-old tank, known as AY-102, holds about 857,000 gallons of radioactive and other toxic chemical waste, much of it removed several years ago from a single-shell storage tank where it was considered unsaf

Department of Energy scientists allege catastrophic mismanagement of the costliest environmental cleanup in world history.

During Hanford's lifespan, 475 billion gallons of radioactive wastewater were released into the ground. Radioactive isotopes have made their way up the food chain in the Hanford ecosystem at an alarming rate. Coyote excrement frequently lights up Geigers, as these scavengers feast on varmints that live beneath the earth's surface. Deer also have nuclear radiation accumulating in their bones as a result of consuming local shrubbery and water.

The EPA has deemed Hanford the most contaminated site in North America—a jarring fact, as the Columbia River, lifeline for more than 10,000 farmers and dozens of commercial fisheries in the Pacific Northwest, surges along Hanford's eastern boundary.

Focus will turn to restoring areas damaged in the oil spill, which the coast guard says represents an important milestone

BP will officially be off the hook for any deposits of oil that wash up on the shores of the Gulf of Mexico – unless they can be traced directly to the Macondo well, it has emerged.Under a plan approved by the Coast Guard on 2 November, the oil company will end active cleanup operations and focus on restoring the areas damaged by last year's oil disaster.The plan, which was obtained by the Associated Press, sets out a protocol for determining which areas of the Gulf still need to be cleaned, and when BP's responsibility for that would end.

The plan "provides the mechanisms for ceasing active cleanup operations", AP said.It went on to suggest the biggest effort would be reserved for the most popular, heavily visited beaches. More oil would be tolerated on remote beaches. BP will be responsible for cleaning up thick oil in marshes – unless officials decide it is best to let nature do its work.The agency quoted coast guard officials saying the plan represented an important milestone in restoring the Gulf. BP has set aside about $1bn for restoration.The Obama administration has been indicating for some time that the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster, which began on 20 April 2010 with an explosion on board the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig that killed 11 workers, was moving into a second phase.Earlier on Tuesday, the US government rolled out a new five-year plan for selling offshore drilling leases.The proposal was a radically scaled back version of the president's earlier plans for offshore drilling – put forward just a few weeks before the Deepwater Horizon blowout – that would have opened up the Arctic and Atlantic coasts for drilling.

Seven decades after scientists came here during World War II to create plutonium for the first atomic bomb, a new generation is struggling with an even more daunting task: cleaning up the radioactive mess.The U.S. government is building a treatment plant to stabilize and contain 56 million gallons of waste left from a half-century of nuclear weapons production. The radioactive sludge is so dangerous that a few hours of exposure could be fatal. A major leak could contaminate water supplies serving millions across the Northwest. The cleanup is the most complex and costly environmental restoration ever attempted.And the project is not going well.

A USA TODAY investigation has found that the troubled, 10-year effort to build the treatment plant faces enormous problems just as it reaches what was supposed to be its final stage.In exclusive interviews, several senior engineers cited design problems that could bring the plant's operations to a halt before much of the waste is treated. Their reports have spurred new technical reviews and raised official concerns about the risk of a hydrogen explosion or uncontrolled nuclear reaction inside the plant. Either could damage critical equipment, shut the facility down or, worst case, allow radiation to escape.The plant's $12.3 billion price tag, already triple original estimates, is well short of what it will cost to address the problems and finish the project. And the plant's start-up date, originally slated for last year and pushed back to its current target of 2019, is likely to slip further.

"We're continuing with a failed design," said Donald Alexander, a senior U.S. government scientist on the project."There's a lot of pressure … from Congress, from the state, from the community to make progress," he added. As a result, "the design processes are cut short, the safety analyses are cut short, and the oversight is cut short. … We have to stop now and figure out how to do this right, before we move any further."

Radioactive fallout from the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant has caused widespread fear, prompting the government in August to adopt basic targets for decontamination efforts in and around Fukushima Prefecture.

But the government's plan falls short and efforts should focus in particular on residential areas with more aggressive decontamination measures and goals, including reducing current radiation levels by 90 percent, two radiation experts said when interviewed by The Japan Times. "I really doubt their seriousness (about decontamination)," said radiation expert Tomoya Yamauchi, a professor at the Graduate School of Maritime Sciences at Kobe University.

The experts said the government's goal of human effort achieving a 10 to 20 percent reduction is not ambitious enough. "A 10 percent reduction doesn't really mean anything. I mean, 40 percent of the radiation would be reduced just by natural causes, so I think the government is almost saying it is just going to wait for the radioactive materials to decrease naturally," said Shunichi Tanaka, former chairman of the Atomic Energy Society of Japan. The main radioactive materials that spewed from the Fukushima No. 1 plant are cesium-134 and -137, the second of which has a half-life of 30 years. Given the relatively short half-life of cesium-134, the total radiation will naturally be halved in four years and fall to one-third in six years, although the threat from the latter will remain for a longer time. The government is now trying to reduce contamination mainly by using high-power water hoses, known as pressure washers, on structures and removing surface soil and vegetation in limited areas.

A day laborer wiping down windows at an abandoned school nearby shrugged at the work crew’s haphazard approach. “We are all amateurs,” he said. “Nobody really knows how to clean up radiation.

Nobody may really know how. But that has not deterred the Japanese government from starting to hand out an initial $13 billion in contracts meant to rehabilitate the more than 8,000-square-mile region most exposed to radioactive fallout

Even more disturbing to critics of the decontamination program is the fact that the government awarded the first contracts to three giant construction companies — corporations that have no more expertise in radiation cleanup than anyone else does, but that profited hugely from Japan’s previous embrace of nuclear power.

Tokyo – Takeo Hayashida signed on with a citizens’ group to test for radiation near his son’s baseball field in Tokyo after government officials told him they had no plans to check for fallout from the devastated Fukushima …

Then came the test result: the level of radioactive cesium in a patch of dirt just yards from where his 11-year-old son, Koshiro, played baseball was equal to those in some contaminated areas around Chernobyl. The patch of ground was one of more than 20 spots in and around the nation’s capital that the citizens’ group, and the respected nuclear research center they worked with, found were contaminated with potentially harmful levels of radioactive cesium. “Everybody just wants to believe that this is Fukushima’s problem,” said Kota Kinoshita, one of the group’s leaders and a former television journalist. “But if the government is not serious about finding out, how can we trust them?”

Kaoru Noguchi, head of Tokyo’s health and safety section, however, argues that the testing already done is sufficient. Because Tokyo is so developed, she says, radioactive material was much more likely to have fallen on concrete, then washed away. She also said exposure was likely to be limited.

(Reuters) - Japanese officials in towns around the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant reacted guardedly to plans announced on Saturday to build facilities to store radioactive waste from the clean-up around the plant within three years.

Japan aims to halve radiation over two years in places contaminated by the crisis. To do so, it may have to remove and dispose of massive amounts of radioactive soil, possibly enough to fill 23 baseball stadiums.

Towns near the crippled nuclear plant have barely been able to start cleaning up until now because they have been unable to convince residents about where to store the radioactive waste.

Japan will seek to halve the amount of radiation in residential areas around the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant and cut children's daily radiation dose by 60 percent over the next two years, according to an emergency decontamination policy document.

The plan is to be endorsed Friday by a government task force dealing with the nuclear crisis triggered by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami

The government under the plan will take responsibility for securing final disposal sites for contaminated soil but will stress the need for temporarily storage locally.

Japan faces the prospect of removing and disposing 29 million cubic metres of soil contaminated by the world's worst nuclear crisis in 25 years from an area nearly the size of Tokyo, the environment ministry said in the first official estimate of the scope and size of the cleanup. Six months after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami triggered reactor meltdowns, explosions and radiation leaks at Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant on Japan's northeast coast, the size of the task of cleaning up is only now becoming clear. Contaminated zones where radiation levels need to be brought down could top 2,400 square km (930 square miles), sprawling over Fukushima and four nearby prefectures, the ministry said in a report released on Tuesday.

If a 5 cm (2-inch) layer of surface soil, likely to contain cesium, is scraped off affected areas, grass and fallen leaves are removed from forests, and dirt and leaves are removed from gutters, it would amount to nearly 29 million cubic metres of radioactive waste, the document showed. This would be is enough to fill 23 baseball stadiums with a capacity of 55,000 spectators, and the government must decide where to temporarily store such waste and how to dispose of it permanently.

Japan has banned people from entering within a 20 km (12 mile) radius of the plant, located about 240 km (150 miles) northeast of Tokyo and owned by Tokyo Electric Power Co . Some 80,000 people were forced to evacuate. The government aims to halve radiation over two years in places contaminated by the crisis, relying on both the natural drop in radiation as time passes and by human efforts.

Fukushima Prefecture has begun holding training seminars for workers who will be cleaning areas contaminated with radiation from the Daiichi nuclear power plant. Fukushima plans to conduct the 2-day technical seminars around the prefecture. On Tuesday, 113 civil engineers, painters and other volunteers who have just begun cleanup work took part in the first seminar in Koriyama City. An expert from the Japan Atomic Energy Agency spoke about what kind of tools should be used to effectively remove radioactive materials from home gutters and roadside ditches. The participants also learned how to protect themselves while they are working. On the second day, they will receive practical training using dosimeters. A man from Iwaki City said he has volunteered several times for decontamination work and would like to learn how to prevent polluted water from spreading. He said he wants to decontaminate Fukushima quickly and restore the area to what it was before. The prefecture plans to hold 10 seminars by the end of the year and hopes to train as many people as possible to help accelerate the cleanup process.

Almost 12 million tons of radioactive waste will be moved from the banks of the Colorado River, the source of drinking water for more than 25 million people across the West, the government said Wednesday. Energy Department officials on Wednesday cleared the way for a plan that was announced this year. The 94-foot high pile of uranium mining waste is near Moab, Utah, and 750 feet from the river. The department now will work on the specifics of moving the waste to a site at Crescent Junction, more than 30 miles northwest. Concern that contaminants would leach into the Colorado River was heightened by January flooding in southern Utah.

Moab's rich uranium deposits were mined for nuclear bombs starting in the 1950s. The Uranium Reduction Co. sold its mill in 1962 to Atlas Corp., which ran it sporadically until declaring bankruptcy in 1998. The Energy Department took over the site in 2001.

Left behind was a 130-acre uranium mill tailings pile, which is mostly in the open air on bare ground, surrounded by a chain-link fence. "This decision demonstrates our commitment to fulfilling our Cold War cleanup obligations as well as preserving the long-term environmental health of the river and the many communities it serves," Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said in a statement. Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, a Republican who lobbied the Bush administration to move the waste, said the development "was great news for Utah and the millions of people who rely on the Colorado River for their water supply." The cleanup cost is expected to be more than $400 million. The department estimates it will begin moving the tailings in 2008 and finish by 2014, department spokesman Mike Waldron said.

Yet another fine example of how a government is so good at misallocating the resource. By pledging to pour hundreds of billions of yen (probably in trillions) into "decontaminating" Fukushima, the Japanese government has already spawned a brand-new industry of residential decontamination. Who are the industry participants? Cleaners, painters, just about anyone who has a high-pressure washer.Some are apparently charging 1 million yen (US$13,000) to hose down your house. As you can see in the video in the previous post, their idea of "decontamination" looks little more than year-end cleanup. Power washing seems to somehow turn cleanup into "decontamination".From Yomiuri Shinbun (10/19/2011):

As decontamination work gets underway in Fukushima Prefecture to remove radioactive materials from the Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant accident, so do troubles with the decontamination contractors. Some are asking 1 million yen [US$13,000] to decontaminate a house.

Disputes over the cost may increase in the future, and there are some who point out that there should be a guideline specifying what constitutes the standard decontamination work and the cost associated with it.