Tag: Fukushima

Major M7.4 earthquake hits near the coast of Fukushima Prefecture, Japan

– March 16, 2022

A major earthquake registered by the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) as M7.4 hit near the coast of Fukushima Prefecture at 14:36 UTC (23:36 JTC) on March 16, 2022. The agency is reporting a depth of 60 km (37 miles). USGS is reporting M7.3 at a depth of 33 km (20 miles), EMSC M7.2 at a depth of 80 km (49 miles). The quake was preceded by M6.4 at 14:34 UTC at a depth of 56 km (35 miles).

The epicenter was located about 66 km (41 miles) ENE of Namie (population 21 866), Fukushima and 96 km (59 miles) SE of Sendai (population 1 063 103), Miyagi, Japan.

There are about 1.8 million people living within 100 km (62 miles).

JMA has issued a Tsunami Advisory for the Fukushima and Miyagi prefectures, with waves up to 1 m (3.3 feet) expected. A Tsunami Forecast is in effect for most of Japan’s eastern coastal areas.

2 046 000 people are estimated to have felt very strong shaking, 3 200 000 strong and 7 379 000 moderate.

The USGS issued a Green alert for shaking-related fatalities. There is a low likelihood of casualties.

A Yellow alert was issued for economic losses. Some damage is possible and the impact should be relatively localized. Estimated economic losses are less than 1% of GDP of Japan. Past events with this alert level have required a local or regional level response.

Overall, the population in this region resides in structures that are resistant to earthquake shaking, though vulnerable structures exist. The predominant vulnerable building types are heavy wood frame and reinforced/confined masonry construction.

Recent earthquakes in this area have caused secondary hazards such as tsunamis, landslides and fires that might have contributed to losses.

Updates

The earthquake has left 4 people dead and more than 160 injured. (Mainichi)

The quake caused power outages in northeastern and eastern Japan, affecting a total of more than 2.2 million households, including some 700 000 in Tokyo. Power was later restored to most of the affected citizens.

The country’s nuclear regulator said data show no abnormalities with reactors and facilities at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, although the cooling system for the spent fuel pools at the No. 2 and No. 5 reactors temporarily stopped. Cooling systems for spent fuel pools at the Fukushima Daini nuclear power plant and the Onagawa nuclear plant in Miyagi were also affected before recovering.

A Tohoku Shinkansen bullet train derailed between Fukushima Station and Shiroishizao Station, but all 78 passengers and crew members aboard were unharmed, according to East Japan Railway Co.

Relatively small tsunami waves were observed at Ishinomaki port in Miyagi and other locations.

https://watchers.news

Japan Decides To Dump One Million Tons Of Radioactive Fukushima Water Into The Pacific; IAEA Approves

Tyler Durden – April 12, 2021

We live in a bizarre world: one where the the Keystone XL pipeline must be shut in case of a hypothetical (and extremely unlikely) leak, but where Japan is allowed to dump over one million tons of radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean. Actually, it’s either bizarre or simply exposing just how profoundly hypocritical, self-serving and corrupt the ESG/Green/Greta Thunberg theater truly is.

Last week we wrote that ten years after the Fukushima disaster, Japan had finally come “clean”, and admitted that it is “unavoidable” that it would have to dump radioactive Fukushima water in the Pacific Ocean. Fast forward to today when moments ago Kyodo confirmed what we already knew: the Japanese government decided to release treated radioactive water accumulating at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant into the sea, having determined “it poses no safety concerns to humans or the environment” despite worries of local fishermen and neighboring countries.

So an oil pipeline whose odds of leaking are virtually zero must be shuttered immediately, but a million tons of radioactive water is “safe” and can be released into the Pacific Ocean, from where it will eventually finds its way into billions of humans around the globe.

But wait, the insanity gets better: Japan’s decision to release all this radioactivity into the ocean was backed by none other than the “scientists” at the International Atomic Energy Agency, with Director General Rafael Grossi saying it is “scientifically sound” and in line with standard practice in the nuclear industry around the world.

So… the IAEA has a standard practice of what exploded nuclear power plants do with their fallout water? And how often has this particular standard practice been invoked we wonder?

Between this and the covid debacle, one can almost see why nobody trusts the world’s so-called  scientists any more.

https://www.zerohedge.com

Dumping Fukushima’s Water into the Ocean What could possibly go wrong?

Robert Hunziker – November 1, 2020

For nearly a decade the crippled Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant has been streaming radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean. As it happens, TEPCO (Tokyo Electric Power Co.) struggles to control it. Yet, the bulk of the radioactive water is stored in more than 1,000 water tanks.

Assuredly, Japan’s government has made an informal decision to dump Fukushima Daiichi’s radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean. A formal announcement could come as early as this year. Currently, 1.2 million tonnes of radioactive water is stored.

The problem: TEPCO is running out of storage space.

Government of Japan’s solution: Dump it into the Pacific Ocean.

Third-party expert solutions: Build more storage tanks.

Environmental groups insist there is no reason why additional storage tanks cannot be constructed outside the perimeter of the plant. They accuse the government of seeking the cheapest and quickest solution to the problem. All along, authorities have promised the site will be safe in 40 years. Really, only 40 years!

According to IAEA’s Director General Grossi, who visited Fukushima in February 2020, dumping radioactive water that is mainly contaminated with tritium meets global standards of practice. (Source: Michael Jacob in Tokyo, What! Is Japan Really Planning to Dump Radioactive Water From Fukushima Into the Ocean? Sweden-Science-Innovation, June 10, 2020)

https://www.counterpunch.org

Japan expected to dump over 1 MILLION TONS of radioactive Fukushima water into Pacific, fishermen fear ‘catastrophic impact’

RT – 0ctober 16, 2020

The Japanese government is planning to release more than one million tons of contaminated radioactive water from the Fukushima nuclear plant into the Pacific Ocean, angering fishermen, local media have reported.

Japan has debated what to do with the rapidly increasing store of radioactive wastewater for years, and now the decision to release it into the ocean could be confirmed by the end of the month.

Currently, Japan houses the water in more than 1,000 tanks, but with 170 additional tons of the radioactive by-product being produced every day, storage space is quickly running out.

It is estimated that all tanks will have reached maximum capacity by the summer of 2022 and Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Katsunobu Kato said on Friday that the decision was one they could “not keep delaying,” Kyodo News reported.

The water is used to cool the Fukushima nuclear reactor core, which went into meltdown after the catastrophic 2011 earthquake and tsunami that struck the plant.

The government previously considered building more tanks to house the additional water, or attempting to evaporate the water into the atmosphere, but an advisory panel recommended releasing it into the ocean as the most efficient solution. However, the release process is not expected to begin until 2022 and is likely to take 30 years to complete.

The prospect of an ocean release has reignited concerns among local fishermen who fear it could destroy their industry.

“We are terrified that if even one fish is found to have exceeded the [radiation] safety standards after the treated water is released, people’s trust in us will plummet,” Kyodo News quoted a local fisherman as saying.

https://www.rt.com

Fukushima: How the ocean became a dumping ground for radioactive waste

DW – March 11, 2020

The nuclear disaster at Fukushima sent an unprecedented amount of radiation into the Pacific. But, before then, atomic bomb tests and radioactive waste were contaminating the sea — the effects are still being felt today.

Almost 1.2 million liters (320,000 gallons) of radioactive water from the Fukushima nuclear power plant is to be released into the ocean. That’s on the recommendation of the government’s advisory panel some nine years after the nuclear disaster on Japan’s east coast. The contaminated water has since been used to cool the destroyed reactor blocks to prevent further nuclear meltdowns. It is currently being stored in large tanks, but those are expected to be full by 2022.

Exactly how the water should be dealt with has become highly controversial in Japan, not least because the nuclear disaster caused extreme contamination off the coast of Fukushima. At the time, radioactive water flowed “directly into the sea, in quantities we have never seen before in the marine world,” Sabine Charmasson from the French Institute for Radiological Protection and Nuclear Safety (IRSN) tells DW.

Radiation levels in the sea off Fukushima were millions of times higher than the government’s limit of 100 becquerels. And still today, radioactive substances can be detected off the coast of Japan and in other parts of the Pacific. They’ve even been measured in very small quantities off the US west coast in concentrations “well below the harmful levels set by the World Health Organization,” according to Vincent Rossi, an oceanographer at France’s Mediterranean Institute of Oceanography (MIO).

But that doesn’t mean there’s no risk, says Horst Hamm of the Nuclear Free Future Foundation. “A single becquerel that gets into our body is enough to damage a cell that will eventually become a cancer cell,” he says.

A study from the European Parliament reached a similar conclusion. The research found that “even the smallest possible dose, a photon passing through a cell nucleus, carries a cancer risk. Although this risk is extremely small, it is still a risk.”

And that risk is growing. Radioactive pollution in the ocean has been increasing globally — and not just since the disaster at Fukushima.

https://www.dw.com