原題:Abe Olympic
Speech on Fukushima Contradicts Nuclear PlantDesign
Bloomberg News 2013/11/01
(抜粋)
Abe
Olympic Speech on Fukushima Contradicts Nuclear Plant Design
安倍首相のオリンピック総会での演説は原発の設計を否定するものだ
By Tsuyoshi Inajima and Yuriy Humber - Oct 31, 2013
Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe says
radioactive water flowing into the sea from the crippled Fukushima atomic
station is being contained within the plant’s harbor, a view maintained by
operator Tokyo Electric Power Co.
Marine scientists, Fukushima residents and
Japan’s general public don’t agree. What’s more, the harbor is designed to take
advantage of tidal flushing, which pushes warmer water out to sea after it has circulated
through reactor cooling systems.
“If he means that radioactive water is
completely contained in the harbor, it’s wrong,” Jun Misonou, senior researcher
at the Marine Ecology Research Institute, said in an interview. The state-sponsored institute was set up 38 years ago to monitor water discharges into the sea from Japan’s power plants.
Abe repeated that the radiation is
contained in the harbor on Oct. 16 in a parliamentary response to questions
from the opposition Democratic Party of Japan. This debate has dogged him since
his Sept. 7 speech to the International Olympic Committee, when he said the
nuclear disaster is “under control.” The next day, Tokyo
won hosting rights for the 2020 Summer Olympic Games.
Tokyo Electric spent more than two years
denying that contaminated water was leaking into the sea from the plant 220
kilometers (137 miles) northeast of Tokyo.
In August, it did an about-face and said
about 400 tons of groundwater containing radioactive particles was in an
uncontrolled discharge into the sea each day. It also said it didn’t know when
the leaks began and that the effect of radioactive water is contained within
the harbor. The company is looking at several engineering solutions to stop the
groundwater.
Fukushima Tides
The utility’s own estimates show that every
day much of the water in the man-made harbor, which is 1 kilometer long and 600
meters at its widest point, is flushed out into the wider Pacific Ocean.
About 40 percent of water inside the harbor
is exchanged every day with the rise and fall of the tides, Yusuke Kunikage, a
spokesman for the utility, said in a phone interview, citing the company’s
estimate. The situation is under control because effects of the radioactive
water leaks have been “limited” based on our samples from outside the harbor,
he said.
Marine researcher Misonou said sea
radiation levels did drop in areas monitored by the institute in the year
following the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami that caused reactor meltdowns.
But the pace of decline in radiation levels in recent months has been slower
than expected, indicating radioactive water discharge from the Fukushima site
into the Pacific Ocean continues, Misonou said.
‘No Impact’
“We believe that the impact on the
surrounding waters is limited to the area within the port of the power plant,
and that judging by the result of our monitoring three kilometers offshore, there
has been no impact on the water or the wider ocean,” Tokyo Electric President
Naomi Hirose said in a video
message posted on the company’s website.
For former nuclear engineer Michael
Friedlander, who describes himself as “an avid supporter of responsible nuclear
power,” these comments are damaging to the atomic industry.
“It’s a very Japanese way of handling the
situation, the authorities telling everybody that everything’s OK, ‘don’t
worry, we’re in control,’” Friedlander, said in an interview from Hong Kong.
Scientists know very little about the
effects of low-level radiation on human bodies and to allow an uncontrolled
flow of contaminated water into the ocean is unprofessional, said Friedlander,
who spent 13 years operating U.S. nuclear plants, including the Crystal River
Station in Florida.
‘Don’t Know’
“Can anyone stand up and say, Jeez, this
represents a clear and present danger to the general public? No, no one can. We
just don’t know,” he said. “What that means is, you don’t just cavalierly
decide that you’re going to dump tons and tons of radioactive water into the
Pacific Ocean.”
In the face of this evidence of tidal flush
and criticism of the harbor containment theory by Friedlander and marine
biologists -- one of whom called it “silly” -- Abe repeated it Oct. 16 in
parliament.
“The effect of radioactive substances in
the nearby waters is blocked within 0.3 square kilometers of the plant harbor,”
he said. Japan’s science and technology policy minister, Ichita Yamamoto, said
the same to the International Atomic Energy Agency a month earlier in Vienna.
“The Japanese government position has not
changed,” Hikariko Ono, a spokeswoman for the prime minister’s office, said
Oct. 29 in an e-mail response to questions on the conflicting views. “We are
monitoring a broad area in the open sea including offshore of the Fukushima
coast, and the radiation levels are far below standard concentration.”
Nuclear Waste
Most of the world’s nuclear power plants
are built on coastlines or near rivers and lakes to draw on water for cooling
reactors. Waste water from atomic plants is filtered to remove radioactive
isotopes such as cesium, tritium and plutonium to within safety guidelines
before it’s returned to rivers and oceans.
In 2011, 13,485 terabecquerels of tritium
and more than 25 terabecquerels of beta radiation, which includes cesium 137
and plutonium 241, were discharged globally, according to this year’s report from the
London-based OSPAR Commission, a body funded my European countries including
France and Germany. One terabecquerel is a trillion becquerels.
By way of comparison, 1 kilogram of uranium
contains 25 million becquerels of radiation. The same weight of coffee has
1,000 becquerels, according to the London-based industry support group World Nuclear
Organization.
Public Poll
The assertions of containment by Abe’s
government and the company are “not true to science,” said Ken Buesseler, a
senior researcher at the Woods
Hole Oceanographic Institution, the world’s largest
private non-profit oceanographic research institution. In an interview last
month, Buesseler said that water samples he took show radioactive elements from
the station many kilometers from the coast.
Buesseler emphasized that the isotopes he
found are not at dangerous levels, but repeated the same theme as Friedlander:
Saying the radiation remains in the harbor hinders the science to investigate
what is getting out and whether it poses a threat.
Strontium-90, for example, binds to bone
tissue and has been linked to cancers such as leukemia. Strontium can enter the
food chain through fish, Buesseler said.
Abe’s comments haven’t persuaded the
Japanese public. A Kyodo News poll conducted Oct. 26 and Oct. 27 found that 83
percent of respondents said they didn’t believe his “under control” statement.
The residents of Namie, a town 8 kilometers
from the Fukushima nuclear station that was evacuated, said that Abe is making
“irresponsible comments,” according to a town assembly statement posted on its
website on Sept. 20.
Radioactive water is leaking from the
Fukushima plant to the harbor and from there into the open ocean, the statement
said. “It’s obvious to everyone.”
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