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In the disaster-affected areas in Tohoku, the amount of debris from tsunami is simply too huge for the affected municipalities to process by themselves. The national government has requested the prefectures and municipalities not affected by the disaster to take the debris and process. Responding to the request, the Tokyo Metropolitan government has decided to accept the debris from Iwate Prefecture for 2 and a half years till March 2014, and will sign an agreement with the Iwate prefectural government on September 30.

As to the "safe" level of burying the radioactive ashes and debris, that's totally meaningless now that the Ministry of Environment has allowed the burial of just about anything, even the ashes that measures over 100,000 becquerels/kg of cesium, as long as there are measures in place at the processing facilities that will prevent the leakage.

According to the government, the density of radioactive materials measured on the debris and in the ashes from burning the debris in Miyako City was lower than the national standard to allow burying. Outside Tohoku, Tokyo will be the first to accept the disaster debris from Tohoku. The Tokyo government plans to accept the total of about 500,000 tonnes of debris. The Metropolitan bureau of environment says "We want to contribute to the recovery and rebuilding of the disaster-affected areas".

The landfill beyond Aomi, Koto-ku is the same one in the Tokyo Bay that the Tokyo Metropolitan government has been dumping the radioactive ashes since May. (See my 9/13/2011 post.)

The Tokyo Metropolitan government will conduct public bidding to decide which contractors will get to process (incinerate) the disaster debris before starting to accept debris from Miyako City in Iwate Prefecture starting next month. The debris will arrive in Tokyo in containers by rail. Radioactive materials will be measured when the debris are shipped, and when they are burned. After incineration, the ashes will be buried in the landfill beyond Aomi in Koto-ku.

Apparently, when the Tokyo Metropolitan government answered questions from the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly on September 28, it was already a done deal. Assemblyman Hirofumi Yanagase, who has been active in alerting the citizens about dangerous radiation levels at sludge plants and waste incinerators in his district in Tokyo, fumes (link is in Japanese):"The government said during the question and answer session in the Assembly on September 28 that the details were still being worked out. But then less than half a day later they announced a concrete plan of accepting 1,000 tonnes of debris from Iwate Prefecture by the middle of November."

NHK also reports that the Tokyo will launch the campaign to invite the 2020 Summer Olympics to Tokyo but with the reduced budget, after the lavish and unsuccessful campaign by Governor Ishihara the last time (for 2016) was heavily criticized. Now Isihara says he will only use 7 billion yen (US$91.5 million) of taxpayers' money instead of 14 billion yen he spent the last time.

Oh and the national government now wants Tokyo and 7 other Prefectures in Kanto and Tohoku (Fukushima, Miyagi, Iwate, Ibaraki, Tochigi, Gunma, Chiba) to build intermediate storage facilities of highly contaminated soil in their own prefectures, according to Yomiuri Shinbun (9/28/2011). Half of Tohoku and most of Kanto are to have a nuclear waste dump, and Tokyo wants to invite Olympics

The conference was set up by the Ministry of the Environment to expedite the acceptance of disaster debris in Iwate and Miyagi Prefectures. People in charge of waste disposal and cleaning in 43 prefectures and 74 municipalities participated.

It is considered that the March 11 disaster resulted in about 23 million tonnes of debris. However, there are many people voicing concern for radiation contamination, and the acceptance of the disaster debris is not happening except for Yamagata Prefecture which has already been accepting the debris and Tokyo which will start accepting starting the second half of October.

The Ministry of the Environment will ask the municipalities once again about their intentions and waste processing capacities, and will coordinate between the disaster-affected areas and the municipalities that will accept the debris.

As for the Tokyo Metropolitan government, it signed the agreement with Iwate Prefecture on September 30 with hardly any consultation with the Metropolitan Assembly and zero consultation with the residents to accept about 500,000 tonnes of disaster debris. The government says it tested the ashes of the disaster debris from Miyako City in Iwate Prefecture and it was only 133 becquerels/kg of radioactive cesium.What the Metropolitan government didn't bother to tell anyone was that the radioactive debris were mixed with non-radioactive regular garbage and burned. The radioactive debris were supposedly 30%. However, the Ministry of the Environment itself did the testing of the disaster debris ashes in the same city back in July, and the Ministry's number was 4895 becquerels/kg of radioactive cesium. (Information from Tokyo Shinbun on 10/5/2011, in Japanese)

A: Already accepting the debris

B: Effort already ongoing such as sending the personnel to the disaster area and setting up the committee to discuss the acceptance

C: Hasn't started sending the personnel to the disaster area or setting up the committee, but ongoing discussion toward accepting the debrisThere should have been D: No plan to accept any debris from the disaster area, period.To top it off, when it actually comes to bringing the disaster debris to those municipalities who will have secretly said yes, the residents may or may not be consulted if the case of Aichi Prefecture is any indication:

Chunichi Shinbun (10/15/2011; don't expect the link to remain long for this paper. If it is gone, go here for the full copy of the article) reports a comment from the Ministry of the Environment:

"When the actual acceptance of the debris happens, we may consider having the municipalities explain to the residents."Doing the rudimentary reading-between-the-lines exercise, I think the Ministry is saying it does not require that the municipalities explain the debris acceptance to the residents, and it certainly does not require that the explanation be done beforehand.Some on the net call the Ministry as "The Ministry of the Environmental Destruction". That's about right.Here's a page from the scanned copy of the Ministry's notice, detailing what information the Ministry wants from the municipalities including the above multiple choice question:

TEPCO intentionally dumped radioactive materials into the ocean, as they had no additional room for storage, the levels showed no signs of decreasing, and all desalination hopes were falling woefully short.  It would also be found that many leaks around, and inside of the reactors were also finding their way into the Pacific, but the public was told that there would not be any risk to them, or the living creatures in the sea. After 7 months however, impact can be found all over the island nation, and spreading throughout the ocean, despite the expectations it would merely be diluted exponentially. In September, scientists from the government's Meteorological Research Institute and the Central Research Institute of the Electric Power Industry announced their findings at a meeting of the Geochemical Society of Japan, adding that some of the cesium will also flow into the Indian Ocean and, eventually, reach the Atlantic.

Floating Radioactive Debris Reaching Hawaii Sooner Than Expected The researchers believed that the cesium had initially dispersed into the Pacific from the coast of Fukushima Prefecture but would be taken to the southwest by the prevailing currents at a depth of around 1,300 feet. Researchers thought it would take years to reach the islands. But now, according to a University of Hawaii researchers, the debris will arrive sooner than expected.  ....Since the March 11th earthquake and tsunami, researchers have been predicting it would take about two years for the debris from Japan to hit Hawaii's west-facing beaches. “We have a rough estimate of 5 to 20 million tons of debris coming from Japan,” said UH computer programming researcher Jan Hafner.

..Their path back to Russia crossed exactly across the projected field of the debris.  Soon after passing the Midway Islands on Sept. 22, they hit the edge of the tsunami debris.   “They saw some pieces of furniture, some appliances, anything that can float, and they picked up a fishing boat,” said Hafner.  It was a 20-foot fishing boat with the word "Fukushima" on it.  “That's actually our first confirmed report of tsunami debris,” said Hafner...  Source: kitv.com 

The Public Concern Was Never Really An 'Official' concern In the first few days after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami that damaged the Fukushima Daiichi power plant, government authorities and the company were criticized for not providing information in a timely fashion. A Kyodo News survey released Sunday found that 58% of respondents did not approve of the government's handling of the crisis at the nuclear plant. More than two weeks later, updates provided via news conferences, press releases, data charts and Twitter feeds have become very frequent and very technical. To a lay person, the onslaught of numbers and unfamiliar terms can feel indecipherable.

"The question is, what is a reasonable interval to give people information?" said Dr. Robert Peter Gale, an American physician and expert on radiation who consulted on the 1986 nuclear disaster in Chernobyl and is now advising Japan's government. "Instead of just releasing each data point you get, sometimes it's better to base things on an average of readings over a period of time." Source: LA Times

This ruse would only work, if the officials could hold off on monitoring and tracking the deposition as long as possible, until the plume had finally moved away from the coastline. TEPCO had intentionally dumped over 11 tons of water in the first few weeks, all of which contained high concentrations of radioactive materials. There would be further reports that would be difficult to quantify, including unknown amount of contaminated water leaked into the ocean from a damaged reservoir, and a plethora of uncharted and un-monitored leaks from the reactors. After dealing with the spring, the tsunami season arrived and even more contamination entered the sea through fallout from the air, and through precipitation runoff.

By March 26th, the news broke that levels near the reactor were 1,250 times the legal limits, as the levels of I-131 reported just a few hundred meters offshore boomed to ten times the already increased levels in a matter of days.  Tepco also reported levels of caesium-137 - which has a longer half life of about 30 years - almost 80 times the legal maximum. Findings throughout the summer challenged experts and officials however, as radiation levels found contamination in some parts had risen over 3,000 times the normal levels. "This is a relatively high level," nuclear safety agency official Hidehiko Nishiyama said in a televised news conference. Drinking 500ml of fresh water with the same concentration would expose a person to their annual safe dose, Mr Nishiyama said, but he ruled out an immediate threat to aquatic life and seafood safety.

"Generally speaking, radioactive material released into the sea will spread due to tides, so you need much more for seaweed and sea life to absorb it," Mr Nishiyama said. Pledges to Monitor and Track Contamination Left Unattended Japanese officials said they would check the seawater about 20 miles (30km) off the coast for radiation back in March, yet even though finding contamination, resumed testing withing 20 km, and downplayed the effects by stating they expected it to show there is no need to be concerned about any possible effect to fish.

By the time that current reaches the Central Pacific, there are branches heading more towards Alaska and the South—that gets harder to predict,” said Ken Buesseler, a senior scientist with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute told Jeff McMahon, a reporter for Forbes. “But that’s one of the things that several people hope to do by measuring these isotopes even at levels when they’re not harmful. We could actually track those ocean currents and better understand the circulation pattern in the Pacific.” Japanese Science and Fisheries Agencies Late Decision to Expand Testing On Marine Products to Weekly Testing 20-30 km Around Fukushima Daiichi

The science ministry and the Fisheries Agency will strengthen testing on marine products and widen the survey for seawater for radiation contamination from the damaged Fukushima No.1 nuclear power plant. The tests on marine products will be conducted once a week, in principle, depending on the size of the fish hauls, in Fukushima, Miyagi and Ibaraki prefectures. The government eased restrictions on land use outside the 20-kilometer no-entry zone around the plant in September. It will now test waters 20-30 km from the plant for radiation, and eventually survey seawater beyond 280 km from the coast using more accurate instruments, officials said.

Sources: ajw.asahi.com, via Nuclear News | What The Physics? Forbes.com SkyNews TEPCO IAEA

As a mater of fact, there is no proper filter in the facility of Tokyo Waterfront Recycle Power. They only have bug filter, which is useless to clean radioactive material. (Source) When the debris arrived at Tokyo, it people were banned to measure radiation around the container. Because of the wind from North, and this smoke from Tokyo Waterfront Recycle Power will contaminate Tokyo again.

“I would probably be hesitant to eat a lot of those fish,” said Nicholas Fisher, a marine sciences professor at the State University of New York at Stony Brook.Fisher is researching how radiation from Fukushima is affecting the Pacific fishery. “There has been virtually zero monitoring and research on this,” he said, calling on other governments to do more radiation tests on the ocean’s marine life.

Contamination of fish in the Pacific Ocean could have wide-ranging consequences for millions. The Pacific is home to the world’s largest fishery, which is in turn the main source of protein for about one billion people in Asia alone

Some of the fish were caught in Japanese coastal waters. Other catches were made hundreds of kilometres away in the open ocean. There, the fish can also be caught by fishers from dozens of other nations that ply the waters of the Pacific.

“It’s completely untrue to say this level of radiation is safe or harmless,” said Gordon Edwards, president of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility.

The impact of the debris on the Pacific is unclear. Much of it is expected to eventually join an already massive patch of existing garbage floating in the Pacific gyre. The arrival of the debris on the west coast also appears to have caught Canadian authorities off guard. “What debris are you talking about?” Health Canada spokesman Gary Holub asked when contacted for a comment this week. “Debris from Japan is not expected on the west coast of Canada for another year.”He asked a reporter to email him media stories about the debris. Later, Holub emailed a statement saying “there has been no official confirmation that the source of this debris is from the tsunami in Japan.”

Cesium was especially prevalent in certain of the species:73 per cent of mackerel tested91 per cent of the halibut92 per cent of the sardines93 per cent of the tuna and eel94 per cent of the cod and anchovies100 per cent of the carp, seaweed, shark and monkfish

“The reassurances have been completely irresponsible. To say there are no health concerns flies in the face of all scientific evidence,” said Edwards, who has advised the federal auditor-general’s office and Ontario government on nuclear-power issues.

Yet, Japan is the only country that appears to be systematically testing fish for radiation and publicly reporting the results.

CFIA is no longer doing any testing of its own. It did some radiation tests on food imports from areas of Japan around the stricken nuclear plant in the weeks after the Fukushima accident.

The whole plan is moot, because, on the side, the ministry has already told municipalities that they can "mix and match" - burn radioactive debris and sludge with non-radioactive debris and sludge to lower the radiation below whatever the limit the ministry sets, which has been 8,000 becquerels/kg and now 100,000 becquerels/kg if the plan gets an approval from the expert committee. The ministry set the limit for Fukushima Prefecture, then notified other prefectures to "refer to the Ministry's instruction to Fukushima Prefecture and notify the municipalities accordingly".

In June, the ministry announced that the ashes that test up to 8,000 becquerels/kg of radioactive cesium can be buried in the final disposal facilities. It called for the temporary storage of the ashes that exceed 8,000 becquerels/kg but didn't specify the final disposal procedure. In the base plan announced on August 10, to bury the ashes whose radioactive cesium exceeds 8,000 becquerels/kg, some measures need to be taken to prevent radioactive cesium from making contact with ground water, or to process the runoff appropriately. For the ashes that measure 8,000 to 100,000 becquerels/kg, the plan calls for: 1) processing facilities with roofs; 2) durable containers; 3) mixing the ashes with cement to solidify.

The plan was given on the same day to the ministry's committee of experts to evaluate the safety of disaster debris disposal, and the ministry hopes to finalize the plan before the end of August.

The Ministry of the Environment, which is likely to be selected as the new regulatory authority over the nuclear industry in Japan, is not very known for timely disclosure of information online. This base plan, if it is announced on their site, is buried so well that I can't find it. The latest information on the earthquake/tsunami disaster debris is dated July 28, which specified the "temporary" storage of the ashes that exceed 8,000 becquerels/kg of radioactive cesium.

It looks like the ministry is simply making this "temporary" storage into permanent.

Hokiaido

Akita

Yamagata

Gunma

For all the other cities and prefectures, residents beware. Beware of the mass media too, who is very quick to mislead by branding the residents as "selfish" and "uncaring" for refusing to burn the radioactive debris. Or firewood. Like a heap of abuse dished out to Kyoto City residents. Glancing through the tweets of people in Japan knowledgeable about waste management, I'm beginning to realize that there is a figurative "waste management village" whose residents are made up of experts, industry people, government officials with vested, common interest in promoting waste processing facilities - just like the "nuclear power plant village" that may or may not be unraveling.

Tokyo

Kanagawa

Toyama

Ishikawa

Yamanashi

Shizuoka

Aichi

The construction companies (Kajima, Taisei are at Fukushima, I think) are the worst offenders in Japan traditionally when it comes to exploiting the temporary, contract workers. Apparently, according to the tweets by the worker mentioned above, there are workers hired by them who know little about radiation danger at Fukushima I Nuke Plant where a 10-sieverts/hr extreme hot spot can be just around the corner.Perhaps I shouldn't say "TEPCO" in the title. It is not really TEPCO who is ready and willing to expose workers to high radiation by driving them to clean up the place. TEPCO asks its main subcontractors (in this case, large construction companies) to figure out a way to complete the task of clearing the debris and tells them the budget. The subcontractors tell their subcontractors , who then tell their subcontractors....(up to 6th or 7th degree removed from TEPCO) to figure out a way, and finally some fresh warm bodies are brought in and put to work. They may or may not know the risk. The task is simple, just removing the debris from the floors with full protection gear and face mask, climbing up and down the stairs as the elevators are broken. All they need is physical strength.

(By the way, he also says the flashing bright light in TEPCO's livecam at night is from the construction people. Not that you have to believe him necessarily, but just for your information.)By putting in many layers of subcontracting, everyone can deny that they are willingly and actively putting workers at risk.Ah the country is broken (and broke), and mountains and rivers are not the same any more, but the subcontracting and "dango" (collusion) are hard to die in Japan.

Schmunk said a town like Tofino is not equipped to deal with such a massive influx of flotsam, noting it doesn’t have enough staff nor enough space in the local landfill.

Miyako is located 260 km north of the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, while Tokyo is roughly 220 km southwest of the plant.

The new policy was revealed during the meeting of experts affiliated with the Ministry of the Environment on August 27. So far, the Ministry's policy has been to allow the ashes with 8,000 becquerels/kg of radioactive cesium and below to be buried, but require the ashes that exceed that level to be stored temporarily while the Ministry decides on the disposal method.

Under the new policy, if radioactive cesium in the ashes exceeds 8,000 becquerels/kg but does not exceed 100,000 becquerels/kg, the ashes are allowed to be buried after they are bound with cement or put in a concrete container. If radioactive cesium exceeds 100,000 becquerels, then the ashes should be buried in the disposal facilities with a roof and/or with the concrete shield.

Radioactive cesium exceeding 8,000 becquerels/kg has been detected from the ashes from burning the regular household garbage in Kanto and Tohoku regions. The Ministry of the Environment has decided to apply the same rule as the disaster debris and allow the ashes to be buried. The municipalities will be able to bury the ashes that they have stored temporarily, but it may be difficult to obtain consent from the residents living near the disposal facilities.

The number "100,000 becquerels/kg" is significant in a sense, as the highest level of radioactive cesium found from ashes after burning the household garbage is 95,300 becquerels/kg in Fukushima Prefecture (link in Japanese). The number is high enough to clear the Fukushima garbage ashes, and it is probably high enough to clear garbage ashes from anywhere else.

Besides, as the NHK article states, even if it exceeds 100,000 becquerels/kg, all they need to do is to bury it in a disposal site with a roof or the concrete shield. This new policy is to be applied to ashes from disaster debris and regular garbage that are radioactive. It's not mentioned in the article but the ashes and slag from the radioactive sewage sludge will be likely to be disposed under the same policy - i.e. burn and bury. (And remember the "mix and match" scheme.)

In the meantime, some garbage incinerators and sludge incinerators at waste processing plants and sewage treatment plants in cities in Kanto have become so radioactive that they have to be shut down. (More later.) The entire country is to become the nuclear waste disposal site, because of one wrecked nuclear power plant. Talk about socializing the cost.

Under the new contract, Babcock will be undertaking ILW retrieval and processing of the fuel element debris from the Active Waste Vault 2 at the Berkeley site. The £14 million ($23 million) project will take some four years to complete.   Babcock said that key areas to be addressed under the contract include the fuel element debris retrieval from Vault 2 and the waste transfer module which will facilitate the transport of the waste to the sorting module, where low-level waste (LLW) and ILW can be separated. The waste can then be prepared for packaging in containers.

Babcock said that it is "one of six companies to be awarded a framework contract for ILW retrieval and processing work across all the Magnox sites, and one of only three to have secured a contract for both solid and wet wastes." The value of the framework contract (within which individual projects are competed) is expected to be £300 million ($480 million) over ten years. The company noted that the Berkeley contract is one of the first projects to be competed under this framework.   Nuvia Ltd - which has also been appointed by Magnox to the framework contract - was awarded a contract in late June for the retrieval and processing of ILW from the chute silo at the Berkeley site. The contract pertains to the retrieval of "miscellaneous activated components" from the silo and packing them into shielded containers.

In December 2010, the two Magnox reactors at Berkeley became the first UK units to be placed in Safestore, a passive state during which they will be monitored and maintained until the site is completely cleared in about 65 years' time. With the fuel already having been removed from the reactors, final dismantlement is scheduled to begin in 2074, by which time the residual radioactivity will have decreased significantly.