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you would think the Japanese government would be doing everything in its power to contain the disaster. You would be wrong—dead wrong.

nstead of collecting, isolating, and guarding the millions of tons of radioactive rubble that resulted from the chain reaction of the 9.0 earthquake, the subsequent 45- to 50-foot wall of water that swamped the plant and disabled the cooling systems for the reactors, and the ensuing meltdowns, Japanese Environment Minister Goshi Hosono says that the entire country must share Fukushima’s plight by accepting debris from the disaster.

an estimated 20 million tons of wreckage on the land, much of which—now ten months after the start of the disaster—is festering in stinking piles throughout the stricken region. (Up to 20 million more tons of rubble from the disaster—estimated to cover an area approximately the size of California—is also circulating in the Pacific.)

We are basically recreating Fukushima all over again -Arnie Gundersen, nuclear engineer Rubble from quake- and tsunami-hit areas to be disposed in Tokyo, Mainichi, September 29, 2011: [Emphasis Added] [...] Tokyo decided to process rubble from disaster-hit areas after detecting only 133 becquerels of radioactive cesium per kilogram of ash generated after rubble was incinerated [...] [D]ue to radiation fears, little progress has been made in efforts to dispose of such waste. [...] The metropolitan government intends to transport approximately 500,000 metric tons of rubble to facilities in the capital and dispose of them over a 2 1/2-year period from this coming October to March 2014. [...] The waste will be separate into burnable and unburnable items. Burnable waste will be incinerated [...] Tokyo Metropolitan Government will regularly measure the amount of radiation in the incinerated ash [...]

See also: “We are basically recreating Fukushima all over again” — Clouds of radiation continue across to Pacific Northwest (VIDEO): At 7:30 in (Transcript Summary) Arnie Gundersen, chief nuclear engineer at Fairewinds Associates: US would be burying 8,000 Bq/kg radioactive waste underground for thousands of years Lots of serious ramifications from burning of nuclear waste Material from Fukushima that was on the ground is now going airborne again Towns now getting cesium redeposited on them by the burning of nuclear material Clouds of radiation recontaminating areas deemed clean or low Continues across to the Pacific Northwest We are basically recreating Fukushima all over again >> Have your voice be heard. Visit the discussion thread: What should be done about Japan burning radioactive debris until at least March 2014? <<

Setting the scene for its revealing report on the plight of workers at Fukushima Daiichi, the Economist details conditions outside the stricken plant. “Patrol cars stop passing vehicles,” notes the reporter, “The police are particularly vigilant in preventing unauthorised people getting near the stricken plant.” Meet the Workers

The air of secrecy is compounded when you try to approach workers involved in the nightmarish task of stabilising the nuclear plant. Many are not salaried Tepco staff but low-paid contract workers lodging in Iwaki, just south of the exclusion zone.” “It is easy to spot them, in their nylon tracksuits — They seem to have been recruited from the poorest corners of society”: One calls home from a pay phone because he can’t afford a mobile phone Another has a single front tooth Both are reluctant to talk to journalist (condition of employment is silence) They share their concerns about safety One said he got 30 minutes of safety training He said almost everything he learned about radiation risks came from TV

Conditions On-site Hiroyuki Watanabe, an Iwaki official reports there are “many safety breaches.” “Workers wading through contaminated water complain that their boots have holes in them — Some are not instructed in when to change the filters on their safety masks,” according to Watanabe. “Even such basic tools as wrenches are in short supply, he claims. Tepco is shielded by a lack of media scrutiny. The councillor shows a Tepco gagging order that one local boss had to sign. Article four bans all discussion of the work with outsiders. All requests for media interviews must be rejected.”

Some 100,000 people are still living as evacuees away from their homes in the wake of the severe accidents at Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant. Kyodo News has reported that some 17,000 children in Fukushima Prefecture have changed schools or kindergartens because of radiation fears. Of these children, some 8,000 moved out of the prefecture.

Given this situation, it is imperative that the central government vigorously push the work of decontaminating areas contaminated with radioactive substances released from the nuclear power reactors. The central and local governments also should provide psychological care to both children who moved to new schools or kindergartens and children who have remained at their schools and kindergartens.

The Diet is expected to soon enact a special law under which the central government will be responsible for disposing of highly radioactive rubble and sludge, and decontaminating radioactive soil. In some cases, the central and local governments will carry out decontamination work together. The cost will be shouldered by Tepco.

What is actually going to take place at the Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant, where word is that the four reactors that were crippled in the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami will eventually be decommissioned? The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) defines "decommissioning" as the process of removing spent fuel from reactors and dismantling all facilities. Ultimately, the site of a decommissioned reactor is meant to be reverted into a vacant lot.

In 1996, the then Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute (JAERI) -- now the Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA) -- finished decommissioning its Japan Power Demonstration Reactor. The decommissioning process of the Tokai Nuclear Power Plant in the Ibaraki Prefecture village of Tokai began in 1998 and is set to end in fiscal 2020, while the No. 1 and No. 2 nuclear reactors at the Hamaoka Nuclear Power Plant in the Shizuoka Prefecture city of Omaezaki are slated for decommissioning by fiscal 2036. Around the world, only around 15 nuclear reactors have thus far been dismantled.

The standard decommissioning process entails six major steps: 1. Remove spent fuel rods, 2. Remove radioactive materials that have become affixed to reactor pipes and containers, 3. Wait for radiation levels to go down with time, 4. Dismantle reactors and other internal vessels and pipes, 5. Dismantle the reactor buildings, and 6. Make the site into a vacant lot.

Related Story Content Story Sharing Tools Share with Add This Print this story E-mail this story Related Related Links Japan PM feared nuclear disaster worse than Chornobyl Special Report: Disaster in Japan Japan ignored own radiation forecasts FAQ: Radiation's health effects Timeline of events at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex FAQ: Nuclear reactorsAccessibility Links Beginning of Story Content TOKYO –

 Related Story Content Story Sharing Tools Share with Add This Print this story E-mail this story Related Related Links Japan PM feared nuclear disaster worse than Chornobyl Special Report: Disaster in Japan Japan ignored own radiation forecasts FAQ: Radiation's health effects Timeline of events at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex FAQ: Nuclear reactors Accessibility Links Beginning of Story Content TOKYO –  The scars of Japan’s March 11 disaster are both glaringly evident and deceptively hidden. Six months after a tsunami turned Japan’s northeast into a tangled mess of metal, concrete, wood and dirt, legions of workers have made steady progress hauling away a good portion of the more than 20 million tonnes of debris covering ravaged coastal areas. The Environment Ministry says it expects to have it all removed by next March, and completely disposed of by 2014. 'I think Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), as well as the Japanese government, made many mistakes.' —Shoji Sawada, theoretical particle physicist But a weightless byproduct of this country’s March 11 disaster is expected to linger for much longer.  The Japanese learned a lot about the risks posed by radiation after the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. Now, once again, they are facing this invisible killer. This time, the mistake is of their own making. "I’m afraid," says Shoji Sawada, a theoretical particle physicist who is opposed to the use of nuclear energy .  Sawada has been carefully monitoring the fallout from the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant. “I think many people were exposed to radiation. I am afraid [they] will experience delayed effects, such as cancer and leukemia.” Evacuation zone Japan's government maintains a 20-kilometre evacuation zone around the Fukushima Daiichi plant, with no unauthorized entry allowed. The government has urged people within a 30-km radius of the plant to leave, but it's not mandatory. Some people say the evacuation zone should include Fukushima City, which is 63 km away from the plant. At the moment, the roughly 100,000 local children are kept indoors, schools have banned soccer and outdoor sports, pools were closed this summer, and building windows are generally kept closed. A handful of people argue the government should evacuate all of Fukushima prefecture, which has a population of about 2 million.  Sawada dedicated his career to studying the impact radiation has on human health, particularly among the survivors of Japan’s atomic bombings. His interest is both professional and personal. When he was 13 years old, his mother urged him to flee their burning home in Hiroshima. She died, trapped beneath rubble . “I think Tokyo Electric Power Company [TEPCO], as well as the Japanese government, made many mistakes,” he says. Those mistakes have been clearly documented since the earthquake and tsunami triggered meltdowns and explosions at TEPCO’s Fukushima Daiichi, some 220 kilometres northeast of Tokyo. Warnings to build a higher tsunami wall were ignored; concerns about the safety of aging reactors covered up; and a toothless nuclear watchdog exposed as being more concerned with promoting atomic energy than protecting the public

The scars of Japan’s March 11 disaster are both glaringly evident and deceptively hidden. Six months after a tsunami turned Japan’s northeast into a tangled mess of metal, concrete, wood and dirt, legions of workers have made steady progress hauling away a good portion of the more than 20 million tonnes of debris covering ravaged coastal areas. The Environment Ministry says it expects to have it all removed by next March, and completely disposed of by 2014.

Tokyo Electric Power Co. <9501> on Monday reported an increase in radioactive materials leaking from damaged nuclear reactors at the Fukushima No. 1 power plant.    The total amount of radioactive cesium that leaked from the containment vessels of the No. 1 to No. 3 reactors reached 70 million becquerels per hour, up 12 million becquerels from the December level, the power firm said.   It seems that radioactive dusts were stirred up because plant workers went inside reactor buildings and removed rubble, TEPCO officials said.

 The outcome was reported to the second meeting on medium- to long-term measures toward decommissioning of the damaged reactors held between the firm and the government on Monday.   Last month, the leaked amount was put at 10 million becquerels each for the No. 1 and No. 2 reactors and 40 million becquerels for the No. 3 reactor.

Why on earth would anyone choose to work at what’s left of the Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear power station? The job description probably goes something like this: - must spend day in full body suit, gloves, thick rubber boots and full-facial mask

- must endure extremely high temperatures in aforementioned suits - must work on badly damaged site containing the remains of 4 crippled nuclear reactors

Employees are under strict instructions not to speak to journalists – and supervisors from their various employers keep an active eye on them when they return to Iwaki in the evening. We were thrown out of one hotel when we had the audacity to approach a group of men employed to clear rubble from the site. Yet there were others who wanted to talk – albeit anonymously. Their working conditions I asked? Terrible, they said: “a burning-hell”, “terrifying” and “very troubling” – phrases I recorded in my notebook. But I wasn’t getting any closer to answering my question – why work there?

Editorial: Say “no” to nuclear energy and autocratic governments Translated by Lydia Ma A recent article in Business Today (763 edition) claimed that Taiwanese people are living under the threat of more than 10,000 nuclear bombs that, if detonated, would reduce their homes to rubble and their stocks to less than the paper they’re written on.

The article goes on to introduce Hirai Norio, a Japanese worker who worked at a power plant in Tokyo for 20 years before dying from cancer. Shortly before his death, Hirai Norio disclosed publicly all that he’d learned about nuclear energy. He also predicted the nuclear accident that happened this year in Japan before his death 15 years ago.

Hirai Norio wasn’t the first one to sound the alarm on the perils of nuclear energy. In 1973, E. F. Schumacher, author of Small is Beautiful, pointed out that it wasn’t right to use highly radioactive and poisonous energy solely for economic gain. He had misgivings about using such a powerful and destructive technology that no human being could confidently control.

Piles of decomposing organic waste, metals and rubble from the devastated towns of north-east Japan have been bursting into fire, posing a new hazard to emergency teams tasked with clearing away the debris and people who are still picking through the remains of their homes.

Fire departments in Miyagi and Iwate prefectures have been called out to deal with 24 blazes that had started inside the towering piles of debris that are being gathered on the outskirts of towns that were devastated by the March 11 earthquake and the tsunami that it triggered. Smoke has been reported emerging from wreckage at a further 13 sites.

The fires are apparently being caused by bacteria in the organic debris or metal reacting with water, fuel or other chemicals that were released when the tsunami - which in places reached a height of 132 feet - swept through these communities. In many places, pools of oil are still visible in areas that are being cleared, while tens of thousands of vehicles are leaking fuel where they have been piled atop one another as they wait to be taken away to be recycled. The heat of the summer months have also served to dry out wood, paper, foam and other combustible materials that are being collected together.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s (NRC) “Near-Term Task Force Review of Insights from the Fukushima Dai-ichi Accident” publicly released its 92-page well intentioned near-term review on the implications of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster for US reactors on July 13, 2011.  The federal agency proposes to improve its “patchwork of regulatory requirements” developed “piece by piece over the decades.” Beyond Nuclear remains concerned that many critical reactor safety areas are still dominated by industry “voluntary initiatives” where non-compliance continues to elude federal enforcement and  Capitol Hill pro-nuclear champions announced their resistance to any costly safety improvements

Of most concern, the NRC is still ignoring warnings as did its predecessor, the Atomic Energy Commission,  in 1972 from their senior safety officer, Dr. Steven Hanuaer to “discourage all further use” in the US of the Fukushima-style General Electric Mark I boiling water reactor. The federal regulators instead issued three more construction permits and eventually 16 more operating licenses in the 1970s for this same dangerous design. There are now 23 Fukushima-style reactors operating in the United States as part of a total of 32 Mark I’s worldwide---counting the smoldering radioactive rubble at Fukushima.   The NRC task force report does not fundamentally address the most critical issue coming out of the Fukushima catastrophe, namely, the design vulnerability of all Mark I containment structures to catastrophic failure during a severe accident

The NRC report further ignores that these same Mark I reactors, like Vermont Yankee and Oyster Creek, are not currently in compliance with their operating licenses that were originally required to have a reliable "leak tight" containment structure. If the NRC were looking for the most significant and meaningful safety upgrade to the US reactors directly impacted by the Fukushima disaster they would require that all Mark I reactor operators restore containment integrity to the original licensed leak tight condition. Or order that they be shut them down, permanently.  All of the Mark I reactors voluntarily installed retrofits to vent all a substandard and undersized containment to save it from rupturing during a severe accident. The same experimental vent was installed at Fukushima in 1991. The same experimental fix failed on three containments buildings to prevent the uncontrolled releases of radioactivity to the air and water that are still occurring now four months after the accident.

SOURCE: News: Sending people to hell, Fukushima Diary, October 10, 2011 [...] a man died all of a sudden while he was decontaminating in Date shi of Fukushima. [...] @touchan3 [Oct. 9 at 10:00p EDT]

He was involved in decontamination of school play grounds and rubble.

@touchan3 [Oct. 10 at 12:00a EDT]

Editor's Note: This is part of the IEEE Spectrum special report: Fukushima and the Future of Nuclear Power.

This past April, when the Japanese government and Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) jointly unveiled their plan to bring the damaged reactors of the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant to a cold shutdown and gain control of the release of radioactive materials, they set a tentative completion date for mid-January 2012. And "tentative" had to be the operative word, for the obstacles TEPCO faced—and to some extent still does face—are challenging in the extreme. They include:

Fuel rod meltdowns in reactors 1, 2, and 3 due to loss of cooling systems following the 11 March earthquake and tsunami; Severe damage to the upper levels of reactor buildings 1, 3, and 4 and slight damage to building 2, stemming from hydrogen explosions; High levels of radiation and contaminated rubble, making working conditions hazardous and difficult; Thousands of metric tons of contaminated water accumulating on the site and leaking out of the reactors.

Up to 18 million tonnes of tsunami debris floating from Japan could arrive on British Columbia's shores by 2014, according to estimates by University of Hawaii scientists. A Russian training ship spotted the junk — including a refrigerator, a television set and other appliances — in an area of the Pacific Ocean where the scientists from the university's International Pacific Research Center predicted it would be. The biggest proof that the debris is from the Japanese tsunami is a fishing boat that's been traced to the Fukushima Prefecture, the area hardest hit by the March 11 disaster.

Jan Hafner, a scientific programmer, told The Associated Press on Tuesday that researchers' projections show the debris would reach Hawaii's shores by early 2013, before reaching the West Coast. They estimate the debris field is spread out across an area that's roughly 3,200 kilometres long and 1,600 kilometres wide located between Japan and Midway Atoll, where pieces could wash up in January.Computer models to track debris pathJust how much has already sunk and what portion is still floating is unknown.

"It's a common misconception it's like one mat that you could walk on," he said. Hafner and the principal researcher in the project, oceanographer Nikolai Maximenko, have been researching surface ocean currents since 2009. When the Japan earthquake and tsunami struck, they applied their research to the rubble sucked into the Pacific Ocean from Japan.